At Artkai, we help mid-market and enterprise businesses modernize software, automate business processes, and build AI-driven solutions grounded in robust security and corporate governance. Powered by the synergy of senior engineering and AI, our approach delivers measurable business outcomes across every project.
Position Type: Full-Time
Duration: Permanent strategic ownership
Location: On-site in Dubai, UAE
Seniority: 12+ years of software engineering & data experience / Executive level
We are seeking an experienced Head of Data Engineering & Analytics who operates with the execution strength and operational rigor of a Senior Engineering Manager / Delivery Lead. The ideal candidate will take hands-on ownership of our end-to-end data strategy, building a governed AWS lakehouse and enterprise data service across trading, payments, crypto, CRM, finance, and risk domains.
In this role, you will establish a single accountable data operating model, industrialize ingestion, streaming, and reconciliation, and turn governed data products into trusted operational and management tools for executive stakeholders.
Key Onsite Requirement: This position requires regular, full-time physical presence on-site in Dubai to work closely with executive stakeholders and lead a multicultural team.
Core Responsibilities * Data Strategy & Platform Ownership: Lead the transformation from fragmented reporting to a centralized, governed AWS lakehouse architecture serving trading, payments, crypto, CRM, and risk domains. * Ingestion & Reconciliation: Industrialize batch and real-time ingestion pipelines (DMS/CDC, Glue, Airflow, Kinesis, Kafka/ksqlDB) to resolve provider-to-ledger reconciliation gaps and build reliable historical views. * Data Modeling & Analytics Governance: Standardize Kimball dimensional modeling, metadata cataloging (OpenMetadata), data lineage, and BI reporting (Metabase, Redshift) across multiple legal entities. * Operational Leadership & Scaling: Scale and mentor a multi-disciplinary data engineering and analytics team, establishing data contracts, quality benchmarks, and FinOps practices. * Executive Alignment & Risk Escalation: Act as the primary technical interface for executives, driving evidence-based decision-making and escalating material launch or data governance risks early.
Candidate Profile & Qualifications * Experience Level: 12+ years in data engineering, analytics, or platform engineering, with 5+ years leading multi-disciplinary data teams. * Domain Expertise: Proven track record of owning production data platforms in regulated financial services, trading, payments, or other high-control environments. * AWS Data Ecosystem: Leadership-level mastery of AWS data architecture, including S3, Redshift, DMS/CDC, Glue, Lambda, Kinesis, and Airflow. * Streaming & Modeling: Strong expertise in Kafka, real-time event streaming, relational/dimensional data modeling, data quality, and metadata management. * Technical Rigor: Ability to credibly review system designs, challenge failure modes, optimize cost/performance, and guide senior data engineers. * Soft Skills: Pragmatic, evidence-based leader with clear executive communication skills, comfortable making architectural trade-offs in a fast-paced environment. * Language: Advanced to Fluent English (B2—C2 level).
Nice to Have * Direct experience with brokerage/CFD/crypto market data, MT4/MT5, oneZero, or Praxis payment reconciliation. * Exposure to modern table formats (Apache Iceberg) and time-travel querying. * Experience with OpenMetadata, Metabase, ksqlDB, data contracts, or FinOps practices. * Familiarity with privacy compliance, regulatory reporting, or ML/AI enablement.
