We’re hiring a Chief Human Resources Officer to lead the people agenda for a global engineering business headquartered in Dubai. This is a true enterprise role: you’ll partner the CEO and executive team, shape culture and performance at scale, and build a modern HR function that supports growth across multiple geographies.
What you’ll be responsible for
- Own and deliver the global HR strategy aligned to business growth, margin, productivity, and delivery performance
- Act as a trusted advisor to the CEO/Board on org design, leadership capability, succession, and workforce planning
- Lead talent acquisition strategy for critical engineering and corporate roles globally (including hard-to-hire skill sets)
- Build and embed a high-performance culture: KPIs, performance management, rewards, and leadership standards
- Oversee compensation & benefits, job architecture, grading, and incentive design with strong governance
- Lead employee relations, compliance, and risk management across multiple jurisdictions (UAE + international)
- Drive HR transformation: HRIS/people analytics, process improvement, shared services/COEs where relevant
- Strengthen engagement, retention, EVP, and internal communications across diverse workforces
Skills
Desired skills / candidate profile
- 15+ years HR experience with recent CHRO / VP HR / HR Director scope in a large, matrixed organisation
- Engineering/EPC/construction/industrial/manufacturing/energy (or similarly complex, project-led, safety-critical) sector background
- Multi-country HR leadership experience with strong understanding of the UAE/GCC labour environment and operating across different legal frameworks
- Proven HR transformation delivery (operating model, HRIS, shared services/COEs, policy governance, process redesign)
- Strong people analytics capability: uses workforce data to drive decisions (productivity, attrition, hiring velocity, cost-to-serve, engagement)
- Deep org design and workforce planning skills: spans/layers, succession, capability mapping, alignment to project pipeline and growth targets
- Talent strategy expertise: executive hiring plus scalable TA model for engineering/project delivery roles; understands scarce-skill hiring and global mobility
- Rewards depth: job architecture, grading, benchmarking, incentive/bonus design, retention tools, and governance for pay equity
- Track record building practical performance frameworks (clear KPIs, calibration, leadership accountability, coaching)
- Confident handling complex employee relations, investigations, policy enforcement, and reputational risk with a fair, calm approach
- Strong stakeholder management: credible with CEO/Board; able to challenge constructively and influence without authority
- Clear, direct, culturally intelligent communicator; comfortable operating at pace and through ambiguity