Licensing and Onboarding Manager

About the role

The Licensing and Onboarding Manager leads the end-to-end professional licensing, pre-boarding and onboarding function across American Hospital Dubai. The role ensures healthcare professionals are processed in line with Dubai Health Authority (DHA) licensing requirements, so that clinical, administrative, support, leadership and international hires complete all pre-employment and joining requirements accurately and on time.

Key responsibilities

• Lead the licensing and onboarding function across all workforce groups, setting standardized workflows, service levels, escalation pathways and controls from offer acceptance to joining.
• Oversee DHA licensing: eligibility review, document validation, DataFlow primary-source verification, assessments, registration, activation, renewal, cancellation and record keeping.
• Ensure candidates meet qualification, experience, good-standing and credential requirements, and coordinate complex licensing cases with DHA, DataFlow, recruiters and clinical leadership.
• Direct pre-boarding: reference checks, medical requirements, visa coordination, travel, housing, insurance, documentation and ID preparation.
• Oversee onboarding for clinical, administrative, support, senior leadership and executive hires, including orientation, induction, system access and mandatory documentation.
• Coordinate with Medical Affairs on physician and independent-practitioner credentialing and privileging, without replacing statutory medical credentialing.
• Maintain accurate, confidential, audit-ready licensing and onboarding records, expiry schedules and trackers, in line with DHA, JCI and privacy requirements.
• Monitor and report KPIs such as time to license and onboard, application turnaround, pending cases and license expiries, and implement corrective actions.
• Drive process improvement and digitalization, including workflow automation, templates, portal controls and vendor coordination.
• Manage and develop the Licensing and Onboarding team through workload allocation, coaching, cross-training and succession planning.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Healthcare Administration, Management or a related field; Master's preferred.
• Professional HR certification such as CIPD, SHRM or HRCI preferred.
• 6 to 10 years of progressive HR experience, including at least 3 years in healthcare licensing, onboarding, credentialing support or HR operations.
• Demonstrated experience managing DHA licensing and DataFlow PSV, and high-volume onboarding and international mobilization.
• Experience supervising a team, managing KPIs and service levels, and leading process improvement or digitalization.
• Experience in a tertiary, multi-site or JCI-accredited healthcare organization is highly preferred.
• Excellent command of spoken and written English; previous Middle Eastern healthcare experience preferable.

Required skills

• Well-versed in Microsoft Office applications.
• Knowledge of the DHA Professional Qualification Requirements (PQR) for Nurses and Allied Health Professionals.