Head of Applied AI

About Orbii

Orbii is the intelligence layer for modern lending. We build the AI-native credit underwriting and loan management platform used by banks, fintechs and SME lenders across the GCC and wider MENA region. By blending behavioural, transactional and alternative data, Orbii helps lenders approve faster without taking on blind risk. We are a well-funded, founder-led team of 13, growing to 24 over the next 12 months, headquartered in Dubai.

The role

AI is not a feature at Orbii, it is the product. You will own our applied AI function end to end: setting the AI strategy and roadmap, leading and growing our AI/ML team (currently a senior AI engineer, two ML engineers and a data engineer), and staying hands-on in the code. You will take over from our current AI lead through a structured handover, inheriting a live platform that already runs credit assessments in production for lenders across the region.

This is a leadership seat with a defined growth path: for the right person, the role is expected to develop into Chief AI Officer as the company scales.

What you’ll do

• Own the applied AI roadmap across underwriting, credit intelligence and our loan management system (LMS), aligned with company strategy
• Lead, coach and grow the AI/ML engineering team; set standards for experimentation, evaluation and shipping AI to production
• Design and evolve LLM-powered analysis on Azure OpenAI: bank statement and financial document assessment, AI chat and interactive layers, and agentic workflows such as self-healing pipelines that detect and resolve errors from logs
• Drive the continued rework of our credit models, including deterministic banding and the interplay between ML models and LLM reasoning
• Own model evaluation, guardrails, latency and data-privacy trade-offs. Our customers are regulated financial institutions
• Work with bank partners and their data teams on data quality, synthetic datasets and model validation exercises
• Partner with the CTO, Head of Product and the data science team to turn credit expertise into shipped intelligence

What you’ll bring

• 7+ years building ML/AI systems in production, with 2+ years leading engineers or an applied AI/ML team
• Deep, current experience with LLMs in production: prompt and context engineering, RAG, agentic patterns, evaluation and cost/latency optimisation
• Strong Python engineering; comfortable in a FastAPI, Azure and Databricks environment
• A track record of shipping AI into high-stakes or regulated domains. Fintech, credit or banking experience is a strong plus
• The instinct to stay hands-on while building the team and processes around you

Nice to have

• Experience with credit risk modelling (PD, scorecards) or lending platforms
• Experience scaling an AI team in a startup from ~5 to 20+ engineers
• Exposure to GCC/MENA markets, or willingness to build for them

What we offer

• Meaningful equity through our Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP)
• Competitive salary, reviewed against performance and company results
• “Think weeks”: up to 4 weeks per year working remotely from anywhere
• Annual training and conference budget, with a personal development plan and monthly 1:1s
• UAE employment visa sponsorship and private health insurance
• High ownership and direct access to the founders in a company at inflection point

Location and how to apply

This role is based on-site at our Dubai office (with think-weeks flexibility). Visa sponsorship is available for the right candidate.

You will inherit a working AI platform, a strong team and a customer base that depends on it, plus the mandate to take it much further.

To apply, send your CV and a short note on why this role to hello@orbii.ai.