Chief Information Officer — Enterprise-Connectivity Business

The mandate

This enterprise-connectivity business has invested steadily in network and service capability, but the information used to direct that investment has become unreliable. Customer orders pass through multiple sales, design, inventory, provisioning, assurance and billing systems. Logical and physical assets do not always reconcile; reserved capacity may not reflect deployed service; fulfilment teams discover exceptions after commitments are made. The result is avoidable capital, prolonged activation, revenue leakage and an incomplete view of which network constraints genuinely affect customers.

The group is appointing a Chief Information Officer to restore a trusted operational backbone. The CIO will own enterprise architecture, business systems, data platforms, technology delivery, service management and the technology-vendor portfolio supporting the connectivity business. Network engineering retains authority for telecommunications assets, while cyber and data-control functions retain their mandates. The CIO must connect those domains so investment decisions are based on accurate demand, inventory and service evidence.

This urgent, unplanned search was triggered when several high-value orders exposed conflicting records across commercial and network teams. The board does not want a prolonged systems replacement that postpones accountability. It expects targeted stabilisation, clear architectural choices and measurable improvement in how quickly the business can promise, activate, bill and assure a service.

Scope and operating context

Based onsite in Dubai, the role influences approximately 2,100 employees and material partners across the United Arab Emirates and a wider international region. The perimeter includes business applications, enterprise architecture, integration, data engineering, software delivery, IT operations, programme management and strategic suppliers. Critical interfaces reach into sales, product, solution design, network planning, field operations, finance, cyber, procurement and customer service.

The application estate reflects product history and acquisitions. Standard connectivity, managed network, security and cloud offers use different order models and identifiers. Manual reconciliation by experienced employees keeps many cases moving but hides the true cost of complexity. Some modernisation programmes have created new integration layers without retiring the records they were meant to replace.

Regulatory and customer requirements raise the stakes. Enterprise information can include network locations, security configurations, government-related records and contractual service evidence. Migration must preserve access control, retention, auditability and data location. The CIO must improve usability without centralising sensitive information beyond lawful or necessary boundaries.

First-year agenda

The first one hundred days will establish truth around critical journeys. The CIO will trace quote-to-order, design-to-activate, incident-to-restoration and service-to-bill for representative products and customers. Teams will compare system records with network and field evidence, quantify manual work, identify control breaks and distinguish data defects from poorly defined process or product.

Immediate stabilisation will focus on the failures that distort customer and capital decisions. These may include duplicate site identifiers, stale capacity reservations, incomplete configuration capture, unreliable completion status or billing disconnected from activation. Each intervention will have an accountable business owner and a measurable outcome; technology teams will not be allowed to declare success merely because an interface has been delivered.

The CIO will then set a domain architecture with authoritative records for customer, location, product, service, resource, order and incident. Ownership, quality thresholds and reconciliation will be explicit. The design should permit countries and product teams to meet legitimate needs without creating another permanent master. Where current platforms can serve the target architecture, they will be simplified and retained; replacement will require an operational case, not a preference for novelty.

Investment priorities will be reset around business constraints. Funding will favour capabilities that improve promise accuracy, reusable fulfilment, inventory confidence, activation evidence, assurance context and bill integrity. Broad front-end redesign will not outrank the operational information needed to fulfil the promise. Programmes unable to show a customer, risk or capacity outcome will be paused, narrowed or closed.

A product-and-technology contract will govern new offers. Before launch, product leaders must define the service model, order rules, resource dependencies, support ownership, billing and retirement path. Exceptions will be visible and costed. The CIO will partner with commercial leaders so sales tools present only configurations that the business can provision and support, while leaving room for controlled solutioning of genuinely strategic requirements.

Delivery practice will move towards smaller releases with end-to-end verification. Software completion, data migration, user adoption, network reconciliation and financial control will be tested together. The CIO will create environments and representative test data that expose complex enterprise scenarios before production. Material releases will include operational fallback and named post-launch ownership.

Vendor and workforce capability will be addressed early. The organisation relies on integrators for knowledge of several core platforms, while internal teams carry undocumented reconciliation expertise. Contracts will be reviewed for outcomes, access, intellectual property, support and exit. Critical knowledge will be paired and documented, with selective recruitment or insourcing where control and continuity justify it.

Within twelve months, the board expects improved activation predictability, fewer inventory-related escalations, demonstrable billing recovery and a smaller portfolio of technology work. The business should be able to link proposed network expenditure to validated customer demand and existing resource truth with materially greater confidence.

Leadership responsibilities

The CIO will chair technology portfolio and architecture governance and provide the group sponsor with a frank view of delivery, risk and dependency. They will co-own operational outcomes with sales, network, service and finance executives rather than retreat behind systems boundaries. When a customer problem cannot be solved within the requested date, the CIO must present the constraint and alternatives early.

They will lead a mixed internal and partner workforce, clarify product and platform accountability and build senior leaders capable of challenging suppliers. The technology function should become easier for business teams to navigate without becoming an unrestricted order-taking service. Priorities and service levels will be published, with exceptions resolved at the appropriate commercial forum.

During material incidents, the CIO owns restoration of information systems and coordinates their role in the wider customer response. Post-incident action must address data, process, architecture and leadership causes. Recurring manual rescue will be treated as evidence of a design or ownership problem.

Measures of success

The executive committee will monitor quote and promise accuracy, order fallout, activation interval, inventory reconciliation, service-assurance context, first-bill correctness and revenue leakage. Customer measures include missed commitments, escalations, restoration and repeat contacts attributable to information-system defects.

Technology measures will cover availability, change failure, delivery predictability, data quality by authoritative domain, technical debt removed, vendor concentration and unit cost. Capital governance will assess work stopped or redirected as well as functionality released. Leadership measures include critical-skill coverage, internal ownership and trusted relationships across network and commercial teams.

Candidate profile

Candidates should bring 22–28 years of technology leadership in telecommunications, enterprise services, utilities or another asset-and-service environment. They must have owned a complex application and data estate and transformed an order, inventory, fulfilment, assurance or billing chain. Experience linking operational records to infrastructure capital decisions is particularly valuable.

The board will seek examples of choosing an authoritative data model amid political disagreement, stopping a large replacement in favour of targeted repair, and improving a customer journey across commercial and network boundaries. Candidates should understand enterprise architecture, integration, OSS/BSS, software delivery, cyber controls, service management and technology sourcing.

The successful CIO will be technically grounded and operationally impatient. They must respect the expertise embedded in manual work while refusing to make it permanent. Clear judgement, supplier independence and the ability to explain architecture through customer and financial consequence are essential.

Compensation and appointment terms

The indicative base range is AED 1,600,000–2,200,000, plus annual incentive and long-term participation. Reward will balance customer delivery, information integrity, service resilience, financial recovery and responsible simplification. Final terms will reflect the scale of comparable technology estates, regional experience and verified forfeited compensation.

Confidentiality

The business is unnamed because system weaknesses, customer orders, network capacity and revenue controls are commercially and operationally sensitive. Detailed architecture and programme information will be disclosed only after identity, conflict and confidentiality review. Applications must not include client inventories, system credentials, network records or proprietary vendor designs.