Director - Research and Development

About the Company

Inception, part of the G42 group, is a leading regional builder of AI-driven products spanning both domain-focused and broadly applicable use cases. Grounded in a strong research and development heritage, the company serves as the intelligence core within the G42 ecosystem, converting data and compute capabilities into practical AI solutions. Inception also aims to deliver meaningful social impact alongside commercial growth.

Role Overview

Inception is looking for a highly experienced Director of Research and Development in Applied AI to lead its applied research organization. This position provides the chance to shape technical strategy across several major programs at once, including a foundation language model line and research in multi-agent and agentic systems, while also supervising client delivery efforts that translate research into production-ready outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

In this role, you will guide the full applied research portfolio, determine its technical direction, and serve as the representative for the function at executive and Board level. You will oversee major programs in foundation language models and multi-agent systems, and ensure that client delivery tracks successfully turn research into deployable products.

You will also act as the final technical decision-maker for release, intellectual property, and prioritization matters, while serving as the main senior contact for the company’s most important external collaborators.

Qualifications

Success in this position will be measured by the strength and maturity of the research portfolio under your leadership, the quality of foundation-model releases approved by you, the growth and health of the Applied Science team, the depth of long-term strategic partnerships, and how ready the research outputs are for executive and Board review.

To be considered, you should bring a strong academic and industry background, including leadership of several research programs, end-to-end model release ownership, and proven experience working with production AI systems.

Additional Information

This role calls for a performance-oriented and curious leader who can work effectively in ambiguous situations. The ideal candidate should be motivated to build strong relationships with stakeholders and create customer-focused solutions, with a proactive mindset and enthusiasm for pushing new boundaries in AI.

What Working at Inception Offers

Culture: An open, diverse, and inclusive workplace with a global outlook that supports personal development and drives major industry-first innovation.

Career: Access to strong learning, development, and advancement opportunities through structured training and advanced technology projects.

Rewards: A competitive compensation package that includes healthcare, education assistance, leave benefits, and other perks.

Terms & Conditions

Applicants who believe they meet the requirements are encouraged to reach out promptly.

Education

A master’s degree or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related AI field is required, with specialization in NLP, large language models, or applied machine learning strongly preferred.

Experience

You should have at least 10 years of experience in AI/ML, including 4 or more years in a technical leadership or director-level position managing multiple active research programs.

Domain Experience

Hands-on production experience with Arabic or other low-resource language NLP at scale is needed, along with experience deploying AI models in regulated or government settings.

Technical Scope

The role includes direct ownership of foundation-model work across pre-training, post-training, alignment, evaluation, multilingual quality, safety, and release. It also includes oversight of content moderation and policy-aligned guardrails, as well as familiarity with agentic AI approaches such as planning, tool use, and multi-agent simulation.

Communication and Leadership

Strong written and verbal communication skills are essential, along with the ability to present effectively to senior executives and the Board. The role also requires mentoring applied scientists, shaping the team structure, hiring talent, and driving performance and growth.

Partnerships

You will manage strategic partnerships with academic collaborators, frontier model labs, hyperscaler partners, internal safety teams, and evaluation/red-teaming vendors, while leading joint workstreams through to completion.