Engineering Manager – Applied AI – talabat, Dubai

talabat, part of the Delivery Hero Group, is recruiting an Engineering Manager for Applied AI in Dubai. Among engineering manager jobs in dubai, this one is unusual in a way worth understanding before you apply: the team you will lead is a team of data scientists. The Applied AI Tribe is talabat’s internal team for turning artificial intelligence into measurable business value, and this post is both a people-leadership role and a hands-on technical one. The role is listed on Delivery Hero’s official SmartRecruiters board (posting ID 744000159571965, released on 4 November 2026).

The manager sets the technical bar, grows the team, and owns the roadmap and delivery — while still practising as a technical expert. The tribe measures itself on the net AI value it delivers to the business, so the work is judged on outcomes, not prototypes.

About the Role

The Applied AI Tribe builds AI systems that automate decisions, enrich data and create intelligent experiences across talabat’s platform, at scale. Its work spans the full AI lifecycle: problem framing, data modelling, feature engineering, model training, deployment and production monitoring.

Few engineering manager jobs in dubai carry this particular mix. The current focus is heavily on large language models, agentic systems and generative AI, applied to real operational and customer problems inside one of the region’s largest delivery platforms — not demonstration projects, but systems that run in production and are measured on the value they return.

Evaluation is treated as a discipline in its own right. The manager owns evaluation practice for the team: golden datasets, metrics agreed with stakeholders, and regular evaluation jobs. The tribe champions harness-first design, LLM observability and production feedback loops, so model quality is watched continuously after release, not just at launch.

Experimentation sits alongside that. The team designs and analyses A/B and multivariate experiments to measure model and product impact, and the manager is expected to lift MLOps and engineering standards across the team while partnering with product managers, business teams and senior stakeholders to find the highest-value AI opportunities.

That stakeholder work is a real part of the job, not a formality. AI opportunities inside a delivery platform compete for attention with every other product priority, so the manager has to identify where a model genuinely moves a business number, frame the opportunity in terms stakeholders recognise, and then communicate results honestly once the system is live. It is this combination — deep technical practice plus commercial judgement — that the tribe’s value measure rewards.

Key Responsibilities

The manager appointed to one of the most specialised engineering manager jobs in dubai will be expected to:

• Lead a team of data scientists in the Applied AI Tribe, as both people leader and technical practitioner.
• Set the technical bar, grow the team’s capability, and own the roadmap and delivery.
• Deliver measurable business value from AI — the tribe’s “Net AI Value Delivered”.
• Oversee work across the full AI lifecycle, from problem framing and feature engineering to deployment and production monitoring.
• Drive work on LLMs, agentic systems and generative AI that automates decisions, enriches data and builds intelligent experiences at scale.
• Own evaluation practice: golden datasets, stakeholder-aligned metrics and regular evaluation jobs.
• Champion harness-first design, LLM observability and production feedback loops.
• Design and analyse A/B and multivariate experiments to measure model and product impact.
• Lift MLOps and engineering standards across the team.
• Partner with product managers, business teams and senior stakeholders to identify high-value AI opportunities and communicate results.

In practice, the post holder splits the week between team leadership, technical review, experiment and evaluation results, and stakeholder conversations about where AI should be applied next. It is a role for someone who still wants their hands on the work while carrying responsibility for other people’s growth.

The people side deserves emphasis, because it shapes who succeeds here. Growing a data science team means coaching scientists through ambiguous problem framing, reviewing modelling choices, and holding a high bar on evaluation without slowing delivery to a crawl. Among engineering manager jobs in dubai, few postings describe that balance — practitioner and people leader in the same person — as explicitly as this one does.

Requirements

talabat sets a deep technical bar for engineering manager jobs in dubai in this tribe. The official posting asks for:

• Deep expertise in machine learning, generative AI, deep learning, NLP, recommendation systems and data mining.
• Experience with frameworks and tools such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, Scikit-learn, XGBoost, LightGBM and Transformers, plus LangGraph, Hugging Face and RAG/vector-database experience.
• Excellent SQL and Python.
• Strong statistics, including experiment design and causal inference.
• Data-pipeline skills, for example Airflow.
• Proven experience shipping and monitoring machine learning models in production; BigQuery and GCP are a plus.
• A Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science or a related field; a postgraduate degree is a plus.
• Six or more years in data science, machine learning or generative AI, including production models.
• Two or more years managing or leading a data science or machine learning team.

The posting states no licence requirement and no nationality restriction. Read the shape of the role carefully, though: the leadership experience it asks for is leadership of data science and ML teams, and the technical depth expected is that of a senior practitioner, not a delivery-only manager.

If you already lead ML or data science work, ship models to production and run serious evaluation and experimentation, this is among the most substantial engineering manager jobs in dubai currently open.

Why This Role Stands Out

The first reason is honesty of scope. Many engineering manager jobs in dubai with “AI” in the title turn out to be conventional platform management. This posting is specific about the craft: LLM systems, agentic workflows, golden datasets, observability and feedback loops — a manager here is expected to understand and raise that practice, not just schedule it.

The second reason is measurement. The tribe’s purpose is stated as net AI value delivered, and its evaluation and experimentation habits are described in unusual detail for a job posting. Leaders who like their team’s impact to be provable, in business terms, will recognise the culture that describes.

The third reason is the setting. talabat operates at a scale where AI systems touch ordering, logistics and customer experience for a very large user base, so models that work here have visible, consequential effects — and the feedback data to improve them keeps coming.

There is a timing point as well. The posting was released on 4 November 2026, and roles at this level are usually filled from a small pool of credible candidates. If your profile matches — production ML, GenAI depth, and a team already led — applying while the posting is fresh is the sensible move among the engineering manager jobs in dubai you may be weighing up.

How to Apply for Engineering Manager Jobs in Dubai

Applications are made through the official Delivery Hero SmartRecruiters posting for this role (posting ID 744000159571965): apply here on the official Delivery Hero careers page. Shape your application around evidence: models you have shipped and monitored in production, evaluation or experimentation systems you have built, and the data science or ML teams you have led and grown.

If this post is not the right fit, you can browse other engineering manager jobs in dubai and hundreds more verified Gulf vacancies on our All Jobs page, which is updated with new roles as employers publish them.

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