Director – Innovation,Ecosystems & Partnerships Job Jeddah area,Saudi Arabia,IT/Tech

Job Description The Director of Innovation & Partnerships leads the strategy, sourcing and selection of technology-led innovation and ecosystem collaborations to drive growth, efficiency, and competitive advantage. This role builds and manages an innovation pipeline—from horizon scanning and ideation through proof-of-concept, incubation, and scaled implementation plans—grounded in business outcomes and measurable value.

Partnering closely with Product Management, PMO, Software Engineering, Data and AI, Security, Enterprise IT, and business partners, the director orchestrates a portfolio of internal tech initiatives and external partnerships, establishes engagement models, mitigates technology and delivery risk, and fosters a culture of experimentation and operational excellence across the TIDES organization.

Key Accountabilities

Define the technology innovation vision aligned with TIDES enterprise strategy.

Build a multi-horizon roadmap balancing quick wins with transformational bets.

Translate market, customer, and tech trends into prioritized opportunity areas.

Transform high-level strategic initiatives provided by the CDTO into concrete, actionable plans and outcomes.

Run structured scouting for emerging tech, lead technical due diligence, maintain a curated radar of technologies with adoption recommendations.

Stand up and run an end-to-end discovery: POCs, pilots, incubation, and scale; establish stage gates, success criteria, and kill/continue/scale decisions; ensure traceability from business problems to outcomes, benefits, and ROI.

Work with external vendors and internal partners to ensure effective partnership management; negotiate MOUs, co-development agreements, and joint Go-to-Market models with clear value exchange; create an operating cadence for partner governance, performance, and risk management.

Lead the design and implementation of the OKR framework across TIDES; partner with SMT and department leads to translate organizational vision and strategic priorities into aligned team and individual OKRs; monitor progress against OKRs, build dashboards to visualize performance trends, and provide regular, data-driven insights and reports to executives to ensure accountability.

Skills

Proficiency in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).
Experience in planning and leading large-scale initiatives – with certifications like PMP or Agile.
Experience in technology evaluation and selection.
Strong in managing relationships with external partners and vendors.
Demonstrate experience in leading cross-functional project teams.
Encourages creativity and innovation, developing new ideas and solutions.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including presentation skills.
Analytical, troubleshooting, and problem solving skills.
Proactively identifies business issues and develops creative solutions.
Innovative and big picture thinker.
Ability to work on both short term objectives and long term strategic planning.
Ability to prioritize and manage the workload.
Strong coaching and change management capabilities.
Language:
Arabic/English.
Strong organization and time-management, project management skills.
Self-motivated and self-directed.
Detail-oriented.
Understanding the importance of working in an open, collaborative, multicultural, high-integrity office.
Good knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) is essential.
Familiarity with and ability to leverage AI, machine learning, and blockchain for competitive advantage.

Education Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Information Systems, Information Technology, MIS.

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Director – Innovation, Ecosystems & Partnerships