Manager - Strategic Workforce Planning & Budgeting

About the role

A specialized strategic workforce planning position based in Abu Dhabi, UAE, for an experienced manager to lead enterprise-wide workforce planning, capacity forecasting, resource optimization and workforce budgeting in a complex engineering and technology-driven environment. The role translates engineering workloads, operational requirements and business strategy into actionable workforce plans.

Key responsibilities

• Develop and lead enterprise-wide strategic workforce planning frameworks, methodologies and governance.
• Translate engineering project requirements, operational workloads and business demand into workforce capacity and headcount plans.
• Develop workforce forecasting, productivity, utilization and resource optimization models.
• Conduct scenario modelling, demand variability and sensitivity analysis.
• Identify workforce capability gaps and recommend Build/Buy/Borrow, redeployment and reskilling strategies.
• Support workforce budgeting, workforce cost modelling and organizational design.
• Develop Power BI dashboards and Plan vs. Budget vs. Actual workforce reporting.
• Present strategic workforce recommendations to senior leadership.

Required profile

• 10-15+ years of experience in strategic workforce planning, capacity planning, resource optimization, workforce analytics or related functions.
• Engineering or quantitative academic background, preferably Industrial Engineering, Engineering, Operations Research, Mathematics, Statistics or Business Analytics.
• Mandatory hands-on workforce planning experience for engineering-related departments or large engineering organizations.
• Experience in engineering, defence, aerospace, manufacturing, industrial operations or technology-driven organizations preferred; management consulting experience with leading global strategy consulting firms or Big 4 firms is highly preferred.

Required skills

• Capacity modelling, workforce forecasting, productivity analysis and resource utilization.
• Workforce budgeting, headcount planning and cost optimization.
• Advanced Excel, Power BI and analytical modelling.