AI, Data Governance & Privacy Officer

About Al-Futtaim Group and Orient Insurance

Originating in the 1930s as a trading enterprise, Al-Futtaim Group evolved into a prominent diversified private business headquartered in Dubai, UAE. It comprises five divisions—automotive, financial services, real estate, retail, and healthcare—employing over 35,000 personnel across more than 20 countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. The Group collaborates with over 200 leading global brands and continually adapts to meet its customers' dynamic needs by embracing its values of respect, excellence, collaboration, and integrity. Orient Insurance PJSC, part of the Group since 1982, stands as a market leader in UAE’s insurance sector with a capital of AED 500 million, operating widely in the UAE and surrounding regions.

Role Overview

The AI, Data Governance & Privacy Officer is accountable for implementing and managing a comprehensive governance framework encompassing data, artificial intelligence, privacy compliance, and responsible digital innovation across the enterprise. Serving as the secondary governance authority, this position ensures maximizing data and AI utility while adhering to regulatory, ethical, privacy, and risk management standards. This role is pivotal during the expansion of AI and data technology adoption, including Agentic AI, Generative AI, machine learning, advanced analytics, intelligent automation, and enterprise data platforms impacting various business functions.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and uphold an enterprise-wide AI Governance Framework with defined policies, standards, controls, and procedures.
• Create governance frameworks tailored to Agentic AI, Generative AI, machine learning, advanced analytics, and intelligent automation.
• Lead the AI Governance Committee and define AI project approval and risk evaluation workflows.
• Ensure AI applications comply with regulations, ethical principles, security guidelines, and organizational goals.
• Implement end-to-end AI lifecycle governance including development, deployment, monitoring, and decommissioning stages.
• Establish controls covering AI explainability, fairness, bias mitigation, human oversight, prompt governance, auditability, and model monitoring.
• Construct and operate a robust data governance framework, outlining data ownership and stewardship, enforcing standards for quality, metadata, master data, lineage, retention, and classification.
• Oversee enterprise data cataloguing, inventory, tooling implementations, and drive data quality programs for structured and unstructured data.
• Govern enterprise platforms including data lakes, analytics environments, and Generative AI platforms.
• Lead privacy and data protection duties including Data Protection Officer responsibilities where required, managing compliance to UAE PDPL, DIFC Data Protection Law, GDPR, and similar regulations.
• Conduct Data Protection Impact Assessments, Privacy Risk Assessments, third-party privacy audits, and integrate Privacy by Design practices throughout business and technology processes.
• Manage data subject rights requests, consent procedures, cross-border data transfers, and data breach response frameworks.
• Implement AI risk and model governance, creating standards and controls for model validation, performance tracking, drift detection, human-in-the-loop oversight, and maintaining an AI model inventory.
• Stay abreast of global AI, privacy, and data regulatory developments; translate these into governance practices, coordinate audits and regulatory inspections, and oversee remediation activities.
• Define governance requirements for AI vendors, cloud providers, and data processors, including contract and third-party relationship reviews ensuring privacy, security, and ethics compliance.
• Promote a culture of responsible digital innovation by developing enterprise-wide training programs on responsible AI, data governance, data protection, and information handling, in addition to executive awareness and governance workshops.
• Develop governance performance dashboards and key performance indicators.

Required Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Science, Cybersecurity, Law, or related disciplines, with preference for a Master’s degree.
• Over 10 years of professional experience in data governance, privacy, information and technology risk or governance roles.
• At least 5 years in leadership roles managing enterprise governance initiatives.
• Experience in insurance, financial services, banking, or other regulated sectors is favored.
• Practical expertise working with AI/ML platforms, Generative AI technologies, cloud infrastructure, and enterprise data environments.