A CTO who has already built for Dubai's banks, government and AI labs.
I've lived and shipped in Dubai since 2018 — inside a bank, inside Dubai Municipality, inside a DIFC fintech and most recently as Head of Engineering (AI) at a G42-powered platform. If you're hiring a technical leader here, you want someone who already knows the regulators, the talent market and the pace.
The Dubai context
Dubai's technology economy runs through a handful of ecosystems — DIFC and ADGM for regulated finance and fintech, DMCC and the mainland free zones for commerce and trading platforms, and the G42 orbit for serious AI infrastructure. Each one changes what a CTO has to be good at: a DIFC fintech lives with the DFSA, custody and KYC/AML; a government platform lives with change control and sovereignty; an AI company lives with model access, data residency and the speed the market now expects.
The hiring market is genuinely global — I've led engineers in Dubai alongside teams in Europe, MENA and India from a DIFC office — but the senior layer is thin. Companies here often find a strong engineering manager or a strong architect; finding one person who can design the system, hire the team and still ship is the hard part. That's the gap I fill.
Pace is the other thing. Dubai's best companies move at a founder's speed even inside large organisations. The 'six products in 2026' record on this site is what that speed looks like when the person at the top can still write code.
My Dubai record
- Etera AI (Dubai, Aug 2024 – Sep 2026): Head of Engineering (AI) for a G42-powered travel platform — 21+ microservices on Kafka MSK and EKS, a federated-MCP multi-agent LLM layer, Headout/RateHawk/PKFare integrations
- AllStars Digital, DIFC (2021–2023): Head of Engineering (IT); led 32 engineers across Europe, MENA and India; Azure Kubernetes with Terraform, Fireblocks custody, Kafka; owned the Multibank Group partnership
- Dubai Municipality (2020): Cloud Infrastructure Specialist on dm.gov.ae through the COVID-19 drive — VMware PKS, Istio, Argo CD GitOps, GitLab + Jenkins, Prometheus/Grafana
- Mashreq Bank (2018–2019): Senior Software Engineer on Mashreq Neo (100K+ users, most innovative digital banking app in the GCC) and Digital Onboarding for 10,000+ sellers; set up Azure Kubernetes Service
- Hoppers Network (2023–2024): VP, Head of Engineering across fintech, AI and Web3 products
- Atrix (2026): Founder & CTO, Dubai — six production products shipped in one year
Every item above is on the about page and the CV; the 2026 products each have a case study.
How it works in Dubai
Engagement models, the 90-day plan and the full FAQ are on the main hire-me page. Founders who need part-time leadership can read the fractional CTO page.
“I rarely come across real talents who stand out like Moeid. His ability to handle mobile, cloud infrastructure & web at once was unlike any I've seen. No matter how complex the problem, he resolved it when everyone else failed.”
Donny FernandezIT Manager, Mashreq BankQuestions from Dubai
Are you available on-site in Dubai?
Yes. I'm based in Dubai and have worked on-site at Mashreq, Dubai Municipality, AllStars Digital in DIFC and Etera AI. Hybrid is my default for a full-time role; fractional engagements usually mix on-site days with remote work.
Do you have experience with DIFC / DFSA-regulated companies?
I was Head of Engineering at AllStars Digital Exchange in DIFC, where the platform converted sports-player performance into financial products and used Fireblocks for multi-custodial wallets. I understand what custody, KYC/AML and audit mean for an engineering roadmap.
Can you build with the G42 / UAE AI ecosystem?
Etera AI was G42-powered, and I led its AI engineering for two years — multi-agent LLM orchestration, embeddings and retrieval, and the event-driven backend underneath. That work is why I'm described as a pioneer of agentic AI in the UAE.
What does a fractional CTO cost in Dubai?
It's a monthly retainer scoped to hours, typically 8–15 hours a week, and a fraction of a full-time senior hire. We size it on a free 30-minute call after a short audit of your stack and team.
Hiring a CTO in Dubai?
Book a 30-minute call and I'll give you a straight read on your architecture, team and AI roadmap.