Build Fellow / Systems & Technology Lead
Overview
Our client is a single-family office that currently relies on IT infrastructure borrowed from the wider family office. This role will change that: building an independent technology estate for the family branch from the ground up. That starts with a foundational platform decision (e.g. Google Workspace vs. Microsoft 365) and extends upward through the productivity, security, and automation layers built on top of it.
The scope of the role will grow alongside the family’s evolving structures, which currently include a foundation, several holding vehicles, households across four jurisdictions, and the ventures the family incubates.
One important clarification: this is not a helpdesk role. Day-to-day end-user support is expected to be outsourced to a vendor. This position is responsible for specifying and managing that vendor engagement but will need to provide interim end-user support directly until it’s in place.
Expectations
Infrastructure & Platform
- Establish independent identity, workspace, device, and network infrastructure, separated from the existing family office estate.
- Make the foundational platform decision (Google Workspace or Microsoft 365) and own it thereafter.
Productivity & Systems
- Research, select, implement, and embed the productivity tools each function needs, including accounting, document and knowledge management, and household and estate systems.
- Take well-formed briefs through to delivery, and originate solutions from scratch where no brief yet exists.
Security & Data Protection
- Own the security and data protection architecture across jurisdictions.
Automation & AI
- Design the automation and AI layer, including the judgement of where automation is/ is not appropriate.
Adoption & Training
- Train the team on new systems and tools, treating adoption as a core deliverable of the role rather than an afterthought.
Vendor Management
- Specify and manage outsourced vendor(s) for end-user IT support, providing interim end-user support until such an engagement is in place.
Requirements
- A track record of shipping working systems in small, high-trust environments, as a forward-deployed engineer, solutions architect or business systems lead
- Working fluency in data protection regimes across multiple jurisdictions.
- Equally comfortable specifying a household inventory system and designing a zero-trust identity model, treating neither as beneath nor above them.
- Vendor-agnostic, selecting for fit rather than familiarity.
- Absolute discretion
- High autonomy under ambiguity.
- A collaborative, low-ego disposition.
Preference will be given to candidates already resident in Dubai. Applicants must have a willingness to relocate as organisational needs evolve.
Hours
Full-time. Given the household and family-critical nature of the systems involved, availability outside core hours should be expected during builds, migrations and incidents.
Location
Dubai, UAE.
The role requires high flexibility, including comfort travelling internationally at short notice and for substantial durations.
Salary
Competitive, and depending on experience.
Job ref
EP27: Build Fellow / Systems & Technology Lead for a Single-Family Office in Dubai, UAE.
