Fractional Head of AI

The engagement

A senior AI leader joins your company part-time and owns the AI function end to end: strategy, roadmap, governance, and vendor coordination. Roughly two days per week of hands-on leadership plus executive presence in board and leadership meetings, so AI stops being a side project and becomes a managed, accountable line of the business. You get the seniority of a full-time Head of AI — strategy, PDPL-aware governance, vendor oversight, and reporting your board can read — at a fraction of the fully-loaded cost.

Why ongoing leadership, not another project

Most UAE companies do not have an AI problem — they have an ownership problem. Pilots get built, a few automations ship, vendors get signed, and then nobody is accountable for the whole picture: what we are building next, what it costs, where the data goes, and who approves the risky parts. A project ends; a function does not. A Fractional Head of AI gives you a single accountable owner across strategy, roadmap, governance, and vendors — without the AED 80,000–120,000 per month fully-loaded cost of a full-time senior hire. The work compounds month over month: roadmap stays current, governance stays defensible, and your board gets one person to ask hard questions of.

• One owner for AI strategy, governance, and vendor decisions — not a scatter of consultants

• Decisions made with the business, in the room, not handed over in a PDF

• Roughly half the cost of a full-time Head of AI, with a clean path to convert later

What is included

The engagement is leadership, not staff augmentation. The Fractional Head of AI owns the AI function and represents it at executive level, while coordinating the people and vendors who do the hands-on work.

• Owns AI strategy and a rolling 12-month roadmap tied to business outcomes

• Sits in board and leadership meetings as the accountable AI voice

• Owns governance: risk documentation, human approval workflows, and audit trails

• PDPL-aware (and DIFC Regulation 10-aware where relevant) review of AI data flows

• Coordinates external vendors across cloud, security, legal, and implementation

• Sets priorities and reviews work for any internal team or embedded pod

• Reports monthly to leadership in language a non-technical board can act on

What is not included

Clear lines keep the engagement honest. The Fractional Head of AI leads and governs; specialists and build teams execute under that leadership.

• Not a full-time, in-seat employee — this is a fractional, part-time engagement

• Hands-on build, integration, and maintenance work is scoped separately

• Not legal advice and not a compliance guarantee — we work with your counsel, not in place of it

• Not certification of any kind — we make your AI governance-ready, not officially certified

The monthly rhythm

The cadence is predictable on purpose, so AI leadership shows up in the calendar the same way finance and operations do. A typical month covers strategy, oversight, governance, and reporting on a fixed beat, with the founder kept close throughout.

• Weekly working presence (roughly two days/week) across roadmap, vendor, and team oversight

• Standing seat in the monthly leadership or board meeting as the AI voice

• Quarterly roadmap re-prioritization against business outcomes and budget

• Direct, as-needed line to the founder or managing partner for strategic calls

Governance review

AI that touches customer, patient, tenant, or investor data is a board-level risk, not just a technical one. Each month the Fractional Head of AI keeps your governance posture current: where AI touches personal or regulated data, which steps still need a human in the loop, and whether your risk documentation reflects what is actually running. The work is governance-aware and PDPL-aware, and DIFC Regulation 10-aware where your operations sit in DIFC — focused on practical controls: human approval workflows on consequential actions, audit trails on AI-driven decisions, and vendor risk reviews before new tools touch sensitive data. This is operational risk ownership, not legal advice, and it runs alongside your own counsel rather than replacing it.

• Maintained risk documentation that matches what is actually deployed

• Human approval workflows on consequential, customer-facing, or regulated actions

• Audit trails on AI-assisted decisions, kept review-ready

• Vendor and model risk reviewed before new tools touch sensitive data

Dashboard and reporting

Every month you get a board-ready report — not a wall of metrics, but the four things leadership actually needs to govern AI: where the roadmap stands, what it is costing, where the risk sits, and what decisions are open. Where you run a DVNC AI Ops dashboard, the live numbers on spend, usage, and quality feed straight into the report so the conversation is grounded in real data, not anecdotes.

• Roadmap progress against the quarter's committed priorities

• AI spend across vendors, models, and usage — with the trend line

• Model, vendor, and governance risk status in plain language

• Open decisions and recommendations that need leadership input

What you actually get

• Roughly two days per week of senior AI leadership, plus standing presence in your board and leadership meetings

• A 12-month AI strategy and roadmap, reviewed and re-prioritized each quarter against business outcomes

• Ownership of your AI governance posture: risk documentation, human approval workflows, and audit trails kept current

• PDPL-aware and, where relevant, DIFC Regulation 10-aware review of where AI touches personal and regulated data

• Coordination of external vendors — cloud, security, legal counsel, and implementation partners — under one accountable owner

• A monthly board-ready report covering roadmap progress, spend, model and vendor risk, and governance status

• Direct line to the founder, CEO, or managing partner for strategic AI decisions and escalations

• Handover-ready documentation so the function can transition to a full-time hire when the time is right

Who buys this

• UAE and GCC companies scaling AI past pilots but not ready to hire a full-time CIO or Chief AI Officer

• Family offices, funds, and financial operations where AI has become a board-level and risk-committee topic

• Founders and boards who need one accountable owner for AI strategy, governance, and vendor decisions

What's not in scope

• Full-time, in-seat employment or payroll-class commitments — this is a fractional engagement

• Hands-on build and integration work (scoped and priced separately under build engagements)

• Legal advice, compliance guarantees, or certification — we work alongside your counsel, we do not replace it

• Day-to-day line management of a large internal engineering team beyond the AI function

Common questions