Regulatory & Licensing Manager — UAE (DIFC / ADGM / CBUAE)

ParlexAI; Dubai; On-site; AED 600,000 - 900,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Private medical cover for you and your

Real equity, explained in plain terms

A learning budget, and the time to use

Hybrid working flexibility

The hardware you ask for

Job summary

ParlexAI is establishing a Dubai entity to navigate UAE regulatory licensing for its AI-driven payments solutions. The role leads licensing strategy across DIFC, ADGM, and mainland, determining where ParlexAI can operate and ensuring compliance with CBUAE rules.

You will manage end-to-end authorisation, coordinate with DFSA, FSRA and CBUAE, align product design with oversight requirements, and plan future Gulf expansion including SAMA, with a focus on clear, regulator-friendly filings and

Qualifications

• 6+ years in regulatory affairs or licensing within UAE or GCC financial services.
• At least one authorisation you personally carried from scoping to decision with the DFSA, FSRA or CBUAE.
• Working knowledge of the CBUAE Retail Payment Services and Stored Value Facilities regimes, and of how DIFC and ADGM permissions interact with onshore activity.
• Able to write submissions a regulator accepts: clear, specific, no filler, and consistent with what the business actually do.
• Based in Dubai and able to work onsite; the regulator meetings and the entity are here.
• Nice to have: SAMA licensing experience, exposure to AI or model governance in a regulated setting, and working Arabic.

Responsibilities

• Determine the licensing path for the UAE entity: DIFC versus ADGM versus mainland, and whether Parlex's activity requires a CBUAE Retail Payment Services or Stored Value Facilities licence in its own name.
• Own authorisation applications end to end — regulatory business plan, policies, governance and controller filings, capital and outsourcing arrangements, and every round of regulator questions — against the dates the commercial plan has already committed to.
• Be the named point of contact for the DFSA, FSRA and CBUAE, and manage those relationships as continuing ones rather than one-off submissions.
• Advise product and engineering on regulatory design: where AI can and cannot sit in a decision, what human oversight and model documentation we must be able to produce, and how EU AI Act obligations interact with UAE expectations.
• Maintain licences once granted — conditions, notifications, periodic reporting, controller and business-model changes, and outsourcing approvals.
• Take entry into Saudi through SAMA as the next filing after the UAE, with a realistic view of structure, timeline, cost and local presence requirements, and scope the remaining GCC markets behind it.
• Keep commercial teams accurate about what we can market, contract, pilot and go live with before approval lands, and give them a date and an alternative rather than a refusal.

Skills

Regulatory Affairs

Licensing

DFSA

FSRA

CB UAE

SAMA licensing

Arabic language

AI governance

Regulatory writing

Job description

Parlex builds Arabic-first conversational AI over payments infrastructure — Arabic and Egyptian-dialect NLP, voice, and integrations into bank cores and card schemes. We sell to banks, PSPs and telecoms, today out of Cairo. We are standing up a Dubai entity, and this role decides what that entity is legally allowed to do.

The work is the licensing itself, and it is on a clock. Deciding between DIFC, ADGM and mainland. Working out where our activity actually sits against the CBUAE Retail Payment Services Regulation and the Stored Value Facilities regime, and whether we need an authorisation in our own name or can operate under a licensed partner. Then carrying the application: regulatory business plan, controls, capital, fit-and-proper filings, the regulator's follow-up questions, and the conditions attached to approval. The dates are not yours to set — the commercial plan already assumes we can contract in the Gulf, and hires and customer commitments are being made against it. After the UAE, SAMA and the rest of the Gulf, scoped with time and cost numbers a board can plan against.

The hard part is that our product is AI involved in decisions about customers' money, and no regulator in the region has a fully settled position on that yet. This is a mature regime with clear rulebooks and no clear answer on the one thing we do. You will be explaining model design, human oversight and audit trails to supervisors who are entitled to be sceptical, while telling our own product and sales teams when the answer is no. Precision without becoming an obstacle is the whole job.

Responsibilities

• Determine the licensing path for the UAE entity: DIFC versus ADGM versus mainland, and whether Parlex's activity requires a CBUAE Retail Payment Services or Stored Value Facilities licence in its own name.
• Own authorisation applications end to end — regulatory business plan, policies, governance and controller filings, capital and outsourcing arrangements, and every round of regulator questions — against the dates the commercial plan has already committed to.
• Be the named point of contact for the DFSA, FSRA and CBUAE, and manage those relationships as continuing ones rather than one-off submissions.
• Advise product and engineering on regulatory design: where AI can and cannot sit in a decision, what human oversight and model documentation we must be able to produce, and how EU AI Act obligations interact with UAE expectations.
• Maintain licences once granted — conditions, notifications, periodic reporting, controller and business-model changes, and outsourcing approvals.
• Take entry into Saudi through SAMA as the next filing after the UAE, with a realistic view of structure, timeline, cost and local presence requirements, and scope the remaining GCC markets behind it.
• Keep commercial teams accurate about what we can market, contract, pilot and go live with before approval lands, and give them a date and an alternative rather than a refusal.

Requirements

• 6+ years in regulatory affairs or licensing within UAE or GCC financial services, in payments, banking or fintech.
• At least one authorisation you personally carried from scoping to decision with the DFSA, FSRA or CBUAE — not supervised from a distance.
• Working knowledge of the CBUAE Retail Payment Services and Stored Value Facilities regimes, and of how DIFC and ADGM permissions interact with onshore activity.
• A record of running an application to a date that someone else set, and of telling the business early when that date was going to move.
• Able to write submissions a regulator accepts: clear, specific, no filler, and consistent with what the business actually do.
• Based in Dubai and able to work onsite; the regulator meetings and the entity are here.
• Nice to have: SAMA licensing experience, exposure to AI or model governance in a regulated setting, and working Arabic.

Benefits

• Private medical cover for you and your family
• Real equity, explained in plain terms before you sign
• A learning budget, and the time to actually use it
• Hybrid working from our Cairo office, with flexibility around how you structure your week
• The hardware you ask for, not the hardware we have spare