Build systems that matter.

We build AI platforms, cloud infrastructure and secure software for government and enterprise clients, and we have grown faster than our internal structure has. Roles overlap, processes live in people's heads, and decisions get made twice. You are here to fix that.

This is not a recruitment role. You will own onboarding, but sourcing and interviewing sit elsewhere.

Structure and process:

• Map who does what, who decides what, and where responsibilities overlap or fall through the gaps — then define roles, reporting lines and career levels that hold.
• Write the handbook: working hours, leave, remote and attendance, expenses, code of conduct, disciplinary and grievance procedures. Short, fair, and applied consistently.
• Replace spreadsheets and memory with real HR systems — records, leave, attendance, documentation.
• Standardise the moments that repeat: onboarding, probation, promotion, offboarding.

People:

• Be the person anyone can talk to, and be trusted with what they say.
• Handle employee relations early, fairly and on the record — concerns, conflicts, grievances, disciplinary matters.
• Notice when someone is drifting long before they resign.
• Coach managers, most of them engineers promoted for being good engineers, through the conversations they find hardest.

Performance and pay:

• Run a review cycle that produces outcomes rather than paperwork: objectives, honest feedback, a decision at the end.
• Identify training needs and own the budget for them.
• Own the salary structure — bands, benchmarking, and a defensible answer when someone asks why they earn what they earn.

Culture and compliance:

• Keep people informed of decisions and the reasoning behind them, and build the rituals that hold a team together as it grows.
• Draft contracts, amendments, NDAs and terminations; keep records confidential; coordinate payroll with finance.
• Keep us compliant with local labour law, and say so early when a plan and the law disagree.

Required:

• Five years or more in HR or people operations, including time as the senior HR person — or as a deputy ready to take that step.
• Experience building the function, not administering someone else's: policies, review cycles, job architecture, career levels.
• Employee relations handled first-hand — grievances, conflicts, difficult exits — calmly and documented.
• Solid command of local labour law, contracts and compliance.
• Trusted by leadership and staff at the same time, with the spine to tell either one something unwelcome.
• Absolute discretion.
• Systematic — you leave working processes behind you, not heroics that only function while you are in the room.
• Clear written English and Arabic; a policy that can be misread will be.

Nice to have:

• Technology companies or fast-growing SMEs, where structure is built rather than inherited.
• Coaching first-time managers, particularly technical ones.
• Compensation banding and benchmarking; performance frameworks such as OKRs and 360 feedback.
• Implementing an HRIS, not only using one.
• Engagement surveys, and the harder part of acting on the results.
• Organisational design or change management through a growth phase.
• CIPD, SHRM or equivalent. French.