Job Description

At Careem we are led by a powerful purpose to simplify and improve lives in the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan. We're pioneering the development of innovative services to aid the mobility of people, the mobility of things and the mobility of money.

We're in the driving seat as we help to define how technology will shape progress in some of the fastest-growing countries in the world. Our teams are building tech to meet the needs of the future in areas including data and AI, e-commerce, technology-enabled logistics, maps, identity, and fintech.

We're well placed to solve complex and meaningful challenges at scale, with deep tech expertise, strong regulatory relationships, a local presence, and increasingly specialised global teams which are structured to operate as autonomous start-ups. Our team of over 400 engineers and developers are empowered to develop cutting-edge technology every day.

Careem was established in July 2012, became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Uber Technologies, Inc. in January 2020, and today operates in over 100 cities across 12 countries.

About the team

The Careem Data & AI team's mission is to drive competitive value from data at scale through building AI models to optimize user experiences, decision making, operational efficiencies, and lead the region's AI ecosystem. As the leader of this team, you will be at the forefront of fulfilling this mission. You will be working with and leading the top data talents of the region, leveraging AI to solve the region's day to day problems.

What you'll do

As Head of Data & AI you will have a strategic impact in improving the experience for our 50 million users.

You will be:

• Leading and developing a team of circa 70 Software Engineers, Data Engineers, Data Warehouse Engineers, Data Scientists and Data Analysts.
• Defining and executing an end to-end data strategy and roadmap
• Pushing the data organization to the next level. This is a great opportunity to bring your knowledge and experience to influence on how Data & AI should be organized, optimized and used to drive growth and simplify customer journey with us.
• Developing budgets, forecasts, and metrics
• Driving innovative ideas, solutions and products through leadership and decisive action
• Support Careem on being an AI first company ensure that Data is adding value to all business lines
• Drive building Data & AI community in our region attracting and retaining talent across the board
• Reporting to our CTO and working closely with the leadership team.

Here is a snapshot of currently ongoing projects in Data & AI team in Careem:

• Our big data engineering team is building a self-service, petabyte-scale data platform that encompasses ingestion, processing and querying, using primarily open source technologies such as Spark, Trino, Pinot, Superset, Kubernetes and more.
• Our software engineering team is building a state-of-the-art experimentation platform to enable our organization to make data-driven decisions across the board. They are also building a machine learning platform to simplify how our data scientists can train, deploy, monitor and use ML models across the organization.
• Our data scientists are focused on solving key business problems in areas such as fraud detection, ride-hailing matching, order batching, ETA estimations, location prediction, computer vision, recommendation systems and more.
• Our data analysts are embedded across product squads in Careem and support our colleagues with day-to-day data driven decision making and product insights.
• Our data warehouse team is modeling the entire Careem data warehouse in a more sustainable and distributed manner. They are closely collaborating with big data engineering and software teams to platformize the Data Warehouse v2 and enable self-service capabilities.

What you'll need

• An advanced degree in a quantitative field - computer science, statistics, economics, or mathematics.
• Strong experience in setting up, managing, and growing a data & AI teams
• Strong track record in delivering high impact from data and AI through leading multiple cross-functional projects.
• Have outstanding executive communication skills, connecting the dots between business strategies and outcomes, data strategy and execution of data and analytics initiatives
• Analytical, creative, collaborative and comfortable driving change, and transforming the most valuable ideas into actionable plans, products and results
• Strong collaborator with experience leading initiatives across and partnering with multiple groups and stakeholders
• Knowledgeable of data practices and tools
• Have experience instilling a culture of ownership, collaboration, and results.
• Motivated to make an impact and raise the applied AI bar in the region's ecosystem.

Where you'll be

• Even though we are working remotely, we are strong believers in collaboration and the power of building social connections with our teams. For that reason, our offices are still open and provide plenty of collaboration-friendly spaces at times when teams need it or if you need a quiet space to work outside of home.
• You'll be working out of the Careem Head Office in Dubai, Pakistan.. Due to legal and compensation considerations, you will need to be based out of the country you're hired from as your primary work location.

What we'll provide you

In addition to a competitive long-term total compensation with salary and equity, we have a reward philosophy that expands beyond this. As a Careem colleague you will be able to:

• Be part of a Remote-First organisation
• Work from any country in the world for 60 days a year
• Use Unlimited Vacation days throughout the year
• Access fitness reimbursements for health activities including: gym, health club and training classes.