Who this is for
The UAE is moving quickly on AI and digital services, and many organisations here need senior technical leadership faster than they can hire it. I work with:
- Founders and scale-ups in Dubai and Abu Dhabi who need a CTO-level partner for architecture, hiring and investor conversations.
- Enterprises and family groups modernising legacy systems and setting an AI strategy that will stand up to scrutiny.
- Healthcare and regulated organisations that need to use sensitive data responsibly and keep it in-country.
- Investors and funds that want an independent technical view before they commit capital.
The problems I solve
AI strategy that turns into delivery
Many AI programmes in the region start with ambition and a vendor shortlist. I help pick the use cases that pay back, ground them in your own data and get one into production with evaluation and cost controls. The detail is on my AI and LLM architecture page.
Data protection and residency
Companies may fall under the federal Personal Data Protection Law, or under the separate DIFC or ADGM data-protection regimes if they are based in those free zones, along with sector rules and customer expectations about where data lives. I design architecture that maps data flows, keeps regulated data in the right place and records who accessed what. I work alongside your legal advisers, who interpret the law; my job is to make the systems match their advice.
Private AI for sensitive data
When data cannot leave the country, or the building, I design private AI setups: in-country cloud regions, on-prem open-weight models and gateways that route by sensitivity. I wrote more about this in running private LLMs on-prem.
Leadership gaps
Senior technical hires take time. A fractional CTO gives you that judgement now and helps you hire the permanent leader.
My approach
- Understand the business and the regulatory context. Free zone or mainland, sector rules, customer commitments.
- Map data and systems. What you hold, where it lives, how it moves and who can see it.
- Set the target architecture and roadmap. Cloud, data, AI and security decisions tied to business milestones.
- Deliver a first production win. One use case, measured and governed.
- Build the team. Hiring, mentoring and an operating rhythm that works across time zones.
What you get
- A technology and AI roadmap your board can act on.
- A data map and residency design aligned with your legal advice.
- Reference architecture for cloud, data platform and AI, with security built in.
- A working AI pilot with evaluation, guardrails and cost tracking.
- Hiring plans and role definitions for senior technical staff.
- Technical due diligence reports for investment decisions. See technical due diligence.
How we work together
| Engagement | Length | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture and AI readiness review | 2 to 4 weeks | A clear, independent starting point |
| Fractional CTO | Ongoing, part-time | Leadership while you grow or hire |
| Build and hand-off | Project | A critical platform or AI system delivered |
| Advisory and due diligence | Retainer or one-off | Founders, boards and investors |
I work across US and Gulf time zones, and the first conversation is a free 30-minute call. If you would like to frame the problem first, the challenge analyser takes two minutes.
Why a regional view matters
Much of the advice written about AI and data assumes a US or European regulatory setting and US-hosted cloud services. In the UAE the picture is different in a few practical ways.
- More than one data-protection regime. Mainland companies, DIFC entities and ADGM entities can face different rules, and groups often span several of them.
- Residency expectations. Government, healthcare and financial customers frequently expect data to stay in the country, which shapes cloud region choice and AI vendor choice.
- Arabic and English together. Search, retrieval and AI assistants often need to work across both languages, which affects model selection and evaluation.
- Fast-moving national AI agenda. Expectations from boards and regulators are rising quickly, so governance has to be designed in, not added later.
I bring architecture patterns proven at scale, adapted to these constraints, and I am clear about where legal advice is needed and where engineering decisions can move ahead.
Typical first projects
- An AI readiness review that ranks use cases and sets a governance baseline.
- A data map and residency plan for a group spanning mainland and free-zone entities.
- A private AI pilot on in-country or on-prem infrastructure for sensitive documents.
- Technical due diligence on a regional acquisition or growth investment.
- Fractional CTO cover while a scale-up hires its first permanent technology leader.
Working across time zones
Gulf teams often work with suppliers, investors or parent companies in the US and Europe. I keep a fixed weekly overlap for live sessions, write decisions down so nobody has to be on every call, and use short recorded walkthroughs for reviews. That rhythm keeps momentum without asking anyone to work at midnight, and it suits groups with offices in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and abroad.
Relevant experience
- Event-driven platforms handling more than a million transactions a day.
- Production RAG and agent systems with LangChain and LangGraph, and hands-on private LLM work on an NVIDIA DGX Spark.
- Healthcare data platforms built on OMOP and FHIR. See healthcare data architecture.
- Builder of a self-hosted AI platform on Kubernetes, end to end.
- Multi-cloud infrastructure as code with Terraform on AWS, Azure and GCP.
Browse the case studies, including the compliance-by-design platform for the US and the Gulf.