Director of R&D – Applied AI

About the role

Inception42, a G42 company, is seeking an accomplished Director of Research and Development in Applied AI to lead its applied AI research function and set technical direction across multiple flagship programs.

Key responsibilities

• Own the active R&D portfolio end‑to‑end – research roadmap, milestones, resource allocation and quarterly reviews.
• Direct the foundation language model program end‑to‑end – pre‑training, post‑training (instruction tuning, alignment), evaluation (language quality, multilingual performance, and safety posture), and release.
• Provide oversight to high‑stakes client and delivery tracks and run regular reviews with the R&D team covering progress, blockers, and re‑allocation decisions.
• Represent Inception R&D in CEO‑, group‑executive‑ and Board‑level forums, delivering impactful presentations.
• Own strategic external partnerships with academic research partners, frontier‑model labs, hyperscaler partners, safety teams, and evaluation vendors, leading joint workstreams to closure.
• Lead a team of applied scientists and senior applied scientists through technical mentorship, performance management, hiring, and talent strategy.
• Set and enforce R&D quality standards across projects and teams.

Required profile

• M.Sc. or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Engineering, or an AI‑related field; specialization in NLP, large language models, or applied ML is highly desirable.
• Minimum 10 years of experience in AI/ML, with at least 4 years in a technical leadership or director‑level role directing multiple concurrent research programs.
• Demonstrated ownership of at least one production foundation‑model release end‑to‑end.
• Strong publication record in major NLP/ML venues, or an equivalent product‑driven research and IP‑filing track record.
• Production experience with Arabic or other lower‑resource‑language NLP at scale.
• Experience deploying AI models into regulated or government contexts, including content moderation and policy‑aligned guardrails.

Required skills

• Hands‑on familiarity with agentic‑AI architectures – planning, tool use, multi‑agent simulation.
• Excellent written and verbal communication.

What we offer

• Open, diverse and inclusive culture with a global vision.
• Outstanding learning, development & growth opportunities via structured training programs and innovative, high‑tech projects.
• Competitive remuneration package with perks including healthcare, education support, leave benefits and more.