Requirements
Requires experience in both commercial operations and people management within a group or multi-entity environment. Must have experience working closely with CEO/CFO offices or group strategy functions and building cross-functional performance frameworks. The ideal candidate is deeply people-oriented, pleasant, outward-facing, commercially driven, and a strong connector who can surface difficult truths to leadership.
Description
Job description / Role
Job Type
Full Time
Job Location
Dubai, UAE
Nationality
Any Nationality
Salary
Not Specified
Gender
Not Specified
Arabic Fluency
Not Specified
Job Function
Finance, Business Analysis & Consulting
Company Industry
Recruitment & HR
Description
This is a completely independent, executive-adjacent function designed to sit entirely outside of traditional departmental boundaries. It does not sit within HR, nor does it sit within Finance. Reporting directly to group leadership, you will have the only truly holistic, cross-functional view of how the group is performing across all business entities, acquisitions, portfolio investments, and leadership layers.
Responsibilities
Build and maintain a holistic performance view across all group entities — business units, acquisitions, and functions
Track whether acquired companies are delivering on the reasons they were acquired — integration, revenue targets, product delivery, embedment into the group
Identify whether business units are integrating into the group or operating as lone wolves
Determine what is not working across the group — whether the issue is people, management, structure, or embedment — and surface it clearly to leadership
Track synergies across group entities — are they collaborating, where are the gaps, where are the redundancies
Hold regular conversations up and down the organisation at all levels to build a picture no single stakeholder can see from where they sit
Feed findings to leadership so interventions can be made — through people, strategy, structure, or resource decisions
Be the early warning system — by the time something becomes a crisis it should already have been flagged
Requirements
Experience spanning both commercial operations and people — not one or the other, genuinely both
Has worked in a group, holding company, portfolio, or multi-entity environment where they had oversight above individual business units
Has sat close to a CEO or CFO office, chief of staff function, or group strategy function
Has built or run a cross-functional performance framework — not just departmental KPIs
Has experience tracking whether acquired or invested companies delivered post-close
Deeply people-oriented — can walk into any room at any level and make people feel heard, not assessed. Non-negotiable.
Very pleasant and outward-facing — goes to people, does not wait for people to come to them
Commercially driven — understands how businesses make decisions, not just how people behave. This is not a pure people role.
A connector — takes inputs from finance, people, and commercial and synthesises them into one clear picture that is more useful than any of those inputs alone
Can surface difficult truths — will know uncomfortable things about the organisation and must be able to bring them to leadership in a way that lands and can be acted on
What this person is not
Purely HR background — will default to people metrics and miss the commercial dimension
Purely finance background — will default to numbers and cannot do the relationship layer
Has only ever worked inside one function or one business unit
Conflict-averse — there will be moments requiring uncomfortable truths told upward
Needs a defined process to operate — this function is being built from scratch
Structure
Reports directly to group leadership
Completely independent — not within any existing department
No direct reports initially
People operations is a stakeholder and point of contact on people-related matters
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