Senior Manager, Operations & Delivery – Cybersecurity, Digital Trust & AI

Role Overview

Senior Manager, Operations & Delivery – Cybersecurity, Digital Trust & AI at Ghobash Group (CNS), based in Dubai, UAE. Reporting directly to the Head of Cyber Security, this role serves as the operational number two for the division.

Company Overview

CNS is a technology company founded in 1987 with more than 30 years of experience. The company employs over 320 employees including more than 250 certified engineers. CNS provides digital solutions essential to support enterprise and human development, with in-depth expertise and best-in-class products supporting digital transformation across major industries. With offices in three countries, CNS has extensive reach into and regional knowledge of Middle East markets. The company is expanding into pioneering in-house software development.

Role Purpose

Establish and run the operational and delivery model for the new Cybersecurity, Digital Trust, Data Governance and AI organisation. Translate strategy into execution and ensure new services are designed, mobilised, delivered and scaled with strong governance, commercial discipline and consistent service quality. Build an operating model capable of supporting rapid growth while maintaining delivery quality, customer satisfaction, utilisation, margin and operational resilience.

Key Responsibilities

Operating Model & Organizational Build

• Design and implement the operating model for the new cybersecurity organization.
• Define roles, responsibilities, governance, escalation paths and decision authorities.
• Establish how the new division interfaces with CNS/Ghobash Sales, Pre-Sales, IT, Finance, HR, Procurement and existing managed-services teams.
• Establish standard operating procedures, service handover and customer onboarding processes.
• Translate strategic plans into executable operating plans.

Service Delivery Leadership

• Take executive ownership of delivery performance across cybersecurity, data governance and AI engagements.
• Ensure projects and managed services are delivered against agreed scope, timelines, SLAs, quality and margin.
• Act as the senior escalation point for major delivery or customer issues.

AI-SOC, MDR & Managed Services

• Lead the operational establishment of the new SOC/MDR capability (IT/OT).
• Define the phased AI-SOC operating model, initially covering co-managed services and progressing toward 24×7 capability.
• Establish the SOC's incident management, escalation, shift and capacity model, together with customer onboarding and service-assurance processes.
• Define SLAs and KPIs for managed security services.
• Work with technical leads to embed automation, AI-assisted investigation and detection engineering.
• Ensure SOC growth is aligned with contracted customer demand and sustainable unit economics.

Resource & Capacity Management

• Develop the workforce plan for the division.
• Translate commercial pipeline into resource demand and recruitment priorities.
• Manage utilisation, capacity and resource allocation.
• Balance permanent staff, shared CNS capability, contractors, partners and acquired resources.
• Establish delivery pods aligned to capability and customer demand.

Commercial & Financial Management

• Support development and management of the divisional P&L.
• Establish cost models and delivery economics across services.
• Track key financial and delivery metrics against plan, including revenue, margin, utilisation and profitability.
• Ensure services sold by Sales and Pre-Sales can be delivered profitably.
• Identify opportunities to improve delivery leverage and margin.
• Support annual budget and investment planning.

Customer Experience & Service Management

• Establish customer-service management standards.
• Implement monthly and quarterly service reviews for strategic customers.
• Ensure customer issues are tracked through resolution.
• Establish executive reporting on service performance, risk and security posture.
• Build customer satisfaction and retention into delivery KPIs.
• Support renewal and expansion of managed-service customers.

Quality, Risk & Governance

• Establish a formal delivery quality framework.
• Introduce project and service assurance reviews.
• Maintain operational and delivery risk registers.
• Ensure adherence to contractual, regulatory and internal governance requirements.
• Establish corrective-action processes following delivery issues.
• Support required certifications and compliance programmes.
• Ensure compliance with policies and procedures based on ISO standards adopted by CNS.

Service Industrialisation

• Work with each practice lead to industrialise services — defined scope, delivery methodology, pricing and SLA/KPI framework — turning bespoke delivery into repeatable, reusable IP.

Pre-Sales & Bid Governance

• Support major bids and strategic proposals, validating resource, delivery and risk assumptions before contractual commitment.
• Participate in customer presentations where operational capability is important.
• Support development of Statements of Work and service descriptions, ensuring proposals have realistic mobilisation timelines.

Leadership & People Development

• Build a high-performance delivery culture.
• Mentor delivery managers and technical leads.
• Establish performance expectations and accountability.
• Support succession planning.
• Create structured career and capability-development plans.
• Drive collaboration across the different practice areas.

Qualifications & Experience

• 15+ years in technology, cybersecurity, managed services or enterprise service delivery, including significant senior leadership experience and proven experience building or transforming service organisations.
• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Business, Engineering or a related field.
• Master's degree, MBA, or project and service-management certifications (e.g. PMP, PRINCE2, ITIL) is desired.
• UAE/GCC experience is desired.
• Experience managing complex enterprise customer environments and large-scale, multi-vendor programmes is desired.
• Strong commercial and P&L understanding is desired.

Skills & Competencies

• Strong operational leadership, delivery excellence and commercial judgement.
• Resource, capacity and organisational-design experience.
• Governance, risk management and problem resolution.
• Strong executive stakeholder and customer engagement.
• Working knowledge across AI-SOC/MDR, SIEM/XDR/SOAR, incident response, cloud security, offensive security, GRC, data governance and AI assurance.
• ITIL/service-management and programme/project-governance certifications.