Director - Research and Development (Applied AI)

TL;DR

Director - Research and Development (Applied AI): Lead applied AI research by owning the end-to-end R&D portfolio, setting technical direction, and driving foundation language model and multi-agent/agentic systems programs with an accent on production-ready releases, evaluation and safety posture, and executive/Board-level representation. Focus on research-to-production oversight, IP and prioritization decisions, and technical mentorship while partnering with frontier-model labs and hyperscalers to bring outputs into regulated and high-stakes contexts.

Company

Inception, a hirify.global company, builds AI-powered domain-specific and industry-agnostic products through applied research and an applied AI “intelligence layer”.

What you will do

• Own the applied R&D portfolio end-to-end: research roadmap, milestones, resource allocation, and quarterly reviews.
• Direct the foundation language model program end-to-end: pre-training, instruction tuning/alignment, evaluation (quality, multilingual performance, safety), and release.
• Oversee high-stakes client delivery tracks that productize research outputs, running regular reviews on progress, blockers, and re-allocation decisions.
• Serve as the named technical arbiter for release, IP, and prioritization decisions; act as senior point of contact for strategic external partners.
• Lead strategic external partnerships (academic partners, frontier-model labs, hyperscaler cadence, safety teams, and evaluation/red-teaming vendors) through joint workstreams to closure.
• Lead and mentor applied scientists through technical mentorship, performance/growth, hiring, and defining team shape and talent strategy; enforce R&D quality standards.

Requirements

• Location: Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
• M.Sc. or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Engineering, or an AI-related field; specialization in NLP, large language models, or applied ML is highly desirable.
• Minimum 10 years of experience in AI/ML, including at least 4 years in a technical leadership or director-level role directing multiple concurrent research programs.
• Demonstrated ownership of at least one production foundation-model release end-to-end.
• Strong publication record in major NLP/ML venues or an equivalent product-driven research and IP-filing track record.
• Production experience with Arabic or other lower-resource-language NLP at scale, plus experience deploying AI models in regulated/government contexts (e.g., content moderation and policy-aligned guardrails) and hands-on familiarity with agentic-AI architectures.

Culture & Benefits

• Open, diverse, and inclusive environment with a global vision focused on ground-breaking, industry-first innovations.
• Structured learning and development opportunities through training programs and high-tech projects.
• Competitive remuneration package with healthcare, education support, and leave benefits.

Hiring process

• Contact the team as soon as possible if criteria are met; interviews and evaluation steps are not specified in the posting.