Senior Manager - Operational Excellence

Job Description:

At EDGE bold ideas are engineered into technologies that protect, improve and save lives.

Headquartered in the United Arab Emirates, EDGE is a leading advanced technology group working at the forefront of defence and emerging technologies. Spanning more than 35 specialised companies and multiple centres of excellence, we are purpose-built to move fast. Free from heavy legacy processes, we give our people the autonomy, accountability, and agility to bring breakthrough technologies from concept to reality.

Based in Abu Dhabi, a globally connected hub at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, EDGE is home to a truly multicultural community where bold ideas thrive, and the future is shaped.

Together, we are shaping the future.

BRIDGE is EDGE's centre for Business Excellence, Learning and Innovation. It consolidates seven functions – Business Excellence, Business Transformation & Capability, Business Operations, External Engagement, Agile, AI and Industry 4.0 – under a single reporting line to the BRIDGE Lead, supporting all EDGE entities with operational excellence, capability building and technology-enabled transformation.

The role requires to lead the Business Excellence function and promote an Operational Excellence culture across EDGE entities and UAE companies – improving processes for higher efficiency, better quality, lower cost and on-time delivery. The role owns the EDGE Business Excellence (Biz Ex) project portfolio end to end: converting Excellence Model assessments into a Finance-validated opportunity pipeline, delivering the productivity impact targets, and shipping a chartered, capacity-modelled portfolio ready for execution – while building the entity-level champion network and capability that make excellence self-sustaining.

• Biz Ex Project Portfolio Ownership
• OpEx Assessments & Opportunity Pipeline
• OpEx Culture & Top-Down Targets
• SLAs, Governance & Impact Validation
• Advanced Capability Bets
• People Leadership & Capability Building
• Stakeholder & External Engagement

Own and close the FY EDGE Biz Ex portfolio with Finance-validated productivity impact (AED 10M target); charter the following-year portfolio – categorised, capacity-modelled and execution-ready. Reconcile impact figures with adjacent teams to prevent double-counting.

Lead EDGE Excellence Model / OpEx assessments across entities (proving ground: Halcon) and convert findings into a Finance-validated opportunity pipeline that feeds the project portfolio (target: AED 5M+ pipeline from the first two assessments).

Deploy Top-Down OpEx targets with the Clusters (AED 10M); drive the communication and adoption of the leadership OpEx training target (50% of leadership trained); nominate and coordinate a network of Business Excellence Champions (15, part-time) across the entities.

Implement SLAs, project charters, dashboards and tracking systems for the Biz Ex portfolio; ensure savings and impact are audited and validated by Finance; maintain real-time KPI visibility for leadership.

Land and industrialise strategic capability initiatives with the team – including the Digital Twin pilot (Finance-validated, capability transfer from partner organisations, replicable playbook with defined next use cases), Process Mining deployment and the Quality Academy.

Lead and develop the Business Excellence team (managers and specialists, grades G6-G8); maintain the skills matrix; contribute to career ladders and competence frameworks (e.g. Engineer Career Ladder) with Human Capital.

Integrate with Human Capital on cohort identification for capability programmes; support external engagement with government and industry partners (e.g. MOIAT, ADIO, SMCC); manage consultant and…