Head of Product

Al Etihad Payments empowers employees to work in an environment that best promotes their productivity and well-being, while providing high-quality workplace and fantastic professional experience.

Al Etihad Payments is the UAE’s designated retail payments entity, dedicated to developing and operating world-class infrastructure, standards, and solutions for the UAE Economy. Al Etihad Payments is a subsidiary of the Central Bank of the UAE, strongly supported by the UAE Government.

Our employees are committed to work with licensed financial institutions and other payment service providers to foster innovation and deliver excellent financial services to all in the UAE, efficiently and without friction.

Al Etihad Payments supports the government’s objectives of a cashless society, national digitization, and the Central Bank of the UAE objective of being a top ten central bank globally.

We are a collaborative, diverse and passionate group of individuals that works as one team. We support one another, make impactful contributions to the organization, and develop and nurture meaningful connections across the payments ecosystem!

Lead the product strategy, design and market adoption of open data and payment propositions across Open Banking, Open Insurance, Open FX, Open e-Wallets and Open Wealth. Turn ecosystem needs into useful, trusted services delivered through the national API Hub, and build the positioning, partnerships and go-to-market plans that drive meaningful use.

The Head of Product owns the proposition, user journeys, functional requirements, data and consent needs, business rules and acceptance criteria. The role works closely with Ozone, Nebras technology and the relevant regulatory and industry stakeholders on schemas and specifications. Ozone and the technology function lead the technical design, implementation and operation of the API standards and Hub; the Head of Product ensures those outputs meet market and business needs.

• Set a coherent product vision and prioritised roadmap across the five domains, balancing regulatory objectives, participant readiness, customer value and delivery capacity.
• Discover and validate use cases with banks, insurers, exchange and FX providers, e-wallet providers, wealth firms, third party providers and end users; define the outcomes and journeys each proposition must support.
• Design product features across data access, payments and related consent experiences where applicable, including the value proposition, eligibility, user journeys, service levels and adoption path.
• Assess cross-domain opportunities and dependencies while recognising that each sector may have different permissions, stakeholders and implementation requirements.
• Version management of the Standard and their articulation to the ecosystem

• Own product requirements, functional specifications, business rules, data needs, schema requirements and clear acceptance criteria; maintain traceability from market need through release.
• Work with Ozone to translate requirements into implementable standards and Hub capabilities, review proposed schemas and specifications for product completeness, and resolve functional questions during delivery.
• Support the transition to machine readable Standards and agentic build / service desk requirements
• Partner with the CIPO / CTO and engineering teams on feasibility, sequencing, testing and release readiness without taking ownership of technical architecture, API security design, coding or Hub operations.
• Coordinate consultation and change control with relevant regulators and market participants; document decisions, dependencies and…