Head of Digital Technology

Role Overview

Head of Digital Technology at Al Tayer Group, Dubai, UAE. Lead end-to-end architecture, engineering, and technical operations for a multi-brand, multi-region digital commerce ecosystem.

Company Overview

Al Tayer Insignia is a luxury retail partner with over 40 years of heritage. The company operates boutiques, department stores, and leading online platforms across the GCC, delivering seamless omnichannel retail experiences and iconic brand partnerships.

Role Purpose

Own and evolve the digital commerce technology vision, roadmap, and execution strategy. Drive innovation in headless commerce, MACH architectures, and API-first integrations while aligning technology initiatives with business growth, omni-channel expansion, and customer experience goals. Manage cross-functional engineering teams and act as senior technology advisor to business, product, and commercial stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

Technology Leadership & Strategy

• Own and evolve the digital commerce technology vision, roadmap, and execution strategy.
• Align technology initiatives with business growth, omni-channel expansion, and customer experience goals.
• Drive innovation across headless commerce, MACH architectures, API-first integrations, and cloud-native platforms.
• Act as the senior technology advisor to business, product, and commercial stakeholders.
• Ensure the timely and on-budget completion of technological requirements for Al Tayer Digital Commerce.
• Manage cross-functional teams, taking them from concept to production while remaining involved from a hands-on technical standpoint.
• Define standards and standard operating procedures that govern the technology operations of Al Tayer Digital, bringing consistency and resilience to the technical infrastructure.

Architecture Ownership

• Own enterprise architecture across SFCC (SFRA & Headless), SCAPI/SLAS, Composable Storefronts (MRT/PWA), SAP ERP, OMS, PIM, middleware, and mobile platforms.
• Establish and govern architecture standards covering APIs, integrations, caching, performance, security, and resilience.
• Lead Architecture Review Boards (ARB) and approve Technical Design Documents (TDDs), integration patterns, and solution designs.
• Ensure platforms are scalable and resilient for peak trading events and high-growth markets.

Platform & Delivery Ownership

• Own delivery across all digital commerce platforms including catalog, pricing, promotions, checkout, payments, customer identity, order lifecycle, and post-order operations.
• Lead release management, environment strategy, realm migrations, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Ensure engineering excellence through code quality, testing, automation, and performance optimization.
• Drive continuous improvement in deployment velocity, reliability, and operational maturity.
• Lead strategic planning to achieve business goals by identifying and prioritizing development initiatives and setting timetables for the evaluation, development, and deployment of all web-based services.
• Lead the product development from a technical standpoint and design the technical architecture, create and deliver specifications for software development and requirements for systems integration.

Integration & Enterprise Systems

• Oversee end-to-end integrations with SAP S/4HANA, OMS, PIM, loyalty, payments, logistics, and analytics platforms.
• Ensure data accuracy and consistency across systems using real-time APIs, event-driven architectures, queues, and batch processes.
• Own integration governance, error handling, fallback strategies, and business continuity planning.

Third-Party Integrations Management

• Lead strategy and integration with payment gateways including Checkout.com, Apple Pay, PayPal, Tabby, and Tamara.
• Integrate fraud systems including reCAPTCHA v3, risk scoring, and fraud rules.
• Manage integrations with loyalty platforms, marketing clouds, and CDP solutions.
• Lead product reviews integrations such as Bazaarvoice and AR/VTO solutions.
• Oversee search provider integrations including Algolia and Einstein.
• Manage notification systems including Email, SMS, and Push channels.
• Coordinate with logistics partners for shipments and AWB APIs.
• Ensure compliance for regional regulations including UAE, KSA PDPL, and GDPR.

Security, Performance & Compliance

• Define and maintain strong security posture across platforms, addressing PCI-DSS, GDPR, KSA PDPL, and OWASP requirements.
• Own performance engineering including load testing, CDN/WAF strategy, cache optimization, and monitoring.
• Define and maintain load and performance testing strategies.
• Establish cache strategies to achieve high HIT ratios.
• Manage WAF rules, bot mitigation, and rate limiting.
• Oversee API security including OAuth, access control, and revocation mechanisms.
• Act as escalation point for P0/P1 incidents, leading root cause analysis and post-incident improvements.
• Lead P0 incident handling, root cause analysis, and post-mortems.

People & Engineering Leadership

• Lead and grow cross-functional teams including SFCC, Backend, Mobile App (Native/Flutter), BAU Team, QA, DevOps, and integration engineers.
• Build a high-performance engineering culture focused on accountability, quality, and continuous learning.
• Coach and mentor leaders and engineers, supporting career development and succession planning.
• Lead hiring, performance management, and capability development aligned with future-state architecture.

Stakeholder & Vendor Management

• Partner closely with Product, UX, Marketing, Operations, Finance, and Commercial teams.
• Manage strategic vendor and partner relationships including Salesforce, system integrators, and technology providers.
• Own technology budgeting, forecasting, and vendor performance management.
• Manage relationships with Salesforce CSM, Account Executives, Architects, and TAMs.

Data, Analytics & Optimization

• Enable data-driven decision-making through analytics platforms, dashboards, and observability tooling.
• Support measurement of conversion, performance, stability, and customer experience KPIs.
• Drive optimization initiatives based on insights from data, monitoring, and customer behavior.

Qualifications & Experience

• Master's degree in Computer Science or other Engineering discipline.
• 10+ years in Commerce Technology leadership.
• 5+ years of hands-on SFCC knowledge.

Skills & Competencies

Strong Technical Expertise

• SFCC SFRA & Headless (SCAPI, SLAS).
• Composable architectures (MACH).
• SAP/S4 ERP and OMS integrations.
• CDN, WAF, Cloudflare, and bot protection.
• High-volume, multi-region eCommerce systems.

Hands-On Technical Skills

• JavaScript and NodeJS.
• SFCC ISML, Jobs, OCAPI, and SCAPI.
• Integrations including REST, SOAP, and GraphQL.
• CI/CD pipelines.

Architecture & Design

• Proven experience writing Technical Design Documents.
• Code review and architecture definition capabilities.

Salesforce Certifications

• SFCC Architect.
• B2C Developer.
• B2C Architect.
• Service Cloud.
• Integration Architect.

Additional Technical Experience

• MACH Alliance platforms.
• AI/LLM-driven personalization.
• Mobile apps (Flutter + SCAPI).
• PWA Kit and MRT.

Leadership & Soft Skills

• Strong leadership and team-building abilities.
• Outstanding communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to simplify complex technical concepts for non-technical audiences.
• High ownership mindset; thrives in fast-paced environments.
• Problem solver with excellent decision-making skills.

Languages

• English (required).
• Arabic (desirable).