Job Description:
About AI71:AI71 is an industry leader in artificial intelligence, delivering innovative solutions that empower developers, businesses and governments to solve complex challenges. AI71 builds secure, enterprise-ready applications powered by cutting-edge technology—tailored for knowledge workers and sector-specific needs. AI71 bridges the gap between advanced AI and real-world impact. Guided by a strong commitment to research and responsibility, we create transformative solutions that drive progress and empower communities.
The Role:As ai71 scales across the region, commercial is where platform capability becomes revenue — and in regulated and sovereign markets, that translation is slow, relational, and high-stakes. The Head of Commercial owns it end-to-end: sales, go-to-market, commercial partnerships, and customer success for Ask. Youll inherit a small team operating today mostly as customer success, and build from it a real commercial engine: the operating model, the pipeline discipline, and the incentive structure that dont yet exist.
This is deliberately not a growth-at-all-costs role. In frontier agentic AI, the binding constraint isnt demand — its how fast the product and the organisation can absorb, deliver, and learn. Your job is to win the right clients, in the right sequence, and turn each into a reference that compounds. Youll partner as closely with Product on which clients to take and when as you will with clients on how to buy, and hand each signed deal cleanly to Deployments to deliver.
What Youll Do:As Head of Commercial youre the senior commercial owner for Ask — equally credible in a ministry procurement office, a banks risk committee, and your own forecast review. Your remit spans four areas:
Commercial strategy & go-to-market
Own the commercial strategy for Ask across regulated-enterprise and sovereign segments — in our anchor markets (UAE, Morocco) and in prioritised expansion markets.
- Translate Asks agentic capabilities into offers, pricing, and go-to-market plays that land with regulated and government buyers.
- Own client selection, with Product — choosing lighthouse accounts that strengthen the product and become references, and pacing intake to what the organisation can deliver and learn from. Qualifying out is part of the job.
- Feed structured market and client insight back into the Ask product roadmap, packaging, and prioritisation.
Deals & pipeline
Own the Ask pipeline end-to-end, from sourcing and qualification to close, with forecasting youd stake your name on.
- Personally lead negotiation of Asks most complex, high-value contracts — License Agreements, SLAs, AUPs, DPAs, and Order Forms — through long, multi-stakeholder government and regulated procurement (RFP / RFQ, vendor qualification, security and regulatory review).
- Structure commercial terms specific to agentic risk — data access, autonomy boundaries, usage scope, and liability — in a way that protects ai71 while keeping deals moving, partnering with Legal to resolve contractual and regulatory risk.
Clients & commercial partnerships
Own the post-signature relationship for a small set of high-value accounts — retention, executive continuity, and reference-building — and drive expansion into new use cases alongside Deployments, who lead delivery.
Build and manage a focused partner ecosystem (technology, channel, systems integrators, in-market counterparts) and own the governance that turns partnerships into real pipelines, not logos on a slide.
Scaling the commercial function
- Develop the commercial operating model from the ground up: pipeline stages, qualification bar, forecasting cadence, CRM hygiene, and bid management.
- Design and own the incentive architecture — quotas, targets, and bonuses suited to few, large, long-cycle deals. None exist today; youll build them with Biz Ops and Finance
- Report commercial performance — pipeline health, conversion, revenue, and major deals — to executive leadership and the board.
You bring 12+ years in commercial strategy, deal structuring, or business development, including 4+ years leading a commercial team — team management is a must. Youve sold to…
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