VP & Head of DevEx & DevSecOps

Job Purpose.

The Head of Developer Experience, DevSecOps, and Testing Governance is a highvisibility leadership role created to support RAKBANK's deliberate journey toward becoming an AInative bank, where software is delivered faster, more securely, and at lower cost through effective human–AI collaboration. Reporting to the CTO – Digital & AI, the role owns four enterprisewide capability domains—Agentic SDLC, DevSecOps, Developer Experience, and Testing Governance—and is accountable for establishing and scaling them across the engineering organisation. The focus is on embedding AI at every stage of delivery to drive measurable productivity, quality, and security improvements, while fostering a culture of engineering excellence. This is an executionoriented role that requires operating at the intersection of strategy and handson delivery, defining clear frameworks and ensuring they are adopted and used in practice to create sustainable competitive advantage for the bank.

What You will Do

Agentic Software Delivery Lifecycle (SDLC

• Design and scale an enterprisewide AIdriven SDLC enabling governed humanandagent codelivery from requirements to production
• Deploy and govern specialist AI agents with bounded autonomy, full auditability, and humanintheloop decision controls
• Drive universal adoption and measurable productivity gains, targeting 40%+ improvement in engineering throughput within 18 months

DevSecOps

• Own the endtoend CI/CD and deployment pipeline, embedding security, reliability, and automation at every stage
• Build a selfservice Internal Developer Platform that removes infrastructure friction and accelerates autonomous squad delivery
• Deliver stepchange improvements in deployment frequency, MTTR, and cost efficiency while meeting CBUAE and internal security mandates

Developer Experience

• Establish clear engineering standards and golden paths that reduce cognitive load and accelerate timetovalue
• Build and operate a single, authoritative developer portal for services, APIs, tooling, and operational knowledge
• Govern AIassisted development and engineering KPIs to continuously improve developer productivity, quality, and experience

Testing Governance

• Define and enforce enterprisewide testing standards and coverage thresholds across all engineering squads
• Embed shiftleft and shiftright quality controls, with automated, nonnegotiable gates across the delivery pipeline
• Govern AIenabled QA agents and automation frameworks to deliver predictable release confidence and reduced defect leakage

Leadership & Strategy

• Build, lead, and develop a highperforming engineering leadership team across platform engineering, DevOps, developer experience, and QA
• Represent the engineering capability agenda at the CTO leadership table and in crossfunctional forums with product, risk, compliance, and business stakeholders
• Own and manage strategic vendor relationships across the DevOps toolchain, AI developer tooling ecosystem, and developer portal platforms

What You Will Bring

• 15+ years in software, platform engineering, or DevOps, with at least 4 years in senior leadership roles building and scaling engineering capabilitied
• Proven experience designing and operating enterprise CI/CD platforms (OpenShift, Kubernetes, or equivalent) at scale
• Strong handson background in DevSecOps tooling including SAST, DAST, SCA, container security, secrets management, and IaC policy enforcement
• Demonstrated leadership in Developer Experience initiatives, covering developer portals, engineering standards, and DORAaligned metrice
• Exposure to AIassisted development, agentic systems, or LLMpowered engineering tooling, with the ability to translate technical depth into executivelevel business outcome

Desirable

• Experience working in a regulated financial services environment (banking, fintech, or insurance
• Familiarity with CBUAE / UAE Central Bank technology, security, and operational resilience expectations.
• Prior handson exposure to Java, Spring Boot, React, BPM, or Kafkabased eventdriven architectures.
• Background in Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) or platform product management.
• Knowledge of Model Context Protocol (MCP), multiagent orchestration frameworks, or relevant certifications (CKA, AWS/Azure DevOps, TOGAF, SAFe

What we are not looking For:

A theoretical or advisoryonly leader who defines frameworks and policies but does not stay close to execution or drive real adoption by engineering squads.

A traditional DevOps or QA manager profile limited to tools or team management, without enterprisescale CI/CD design, platform thinking, and embedded security ownership.

A candidate uncomfortable with AIassisted or agentic delivery models, or who views AI as an experimental addon rather than a core part of modern software engineering.

A leader without experience operating in regulated environments, who cannot balance speed, automation, and innovation with governance, security, and regulatory discipline.