Director of Commercial

About AI71:

AI71 is an industry leader in artificial intelligence, delivering innovative solutions that empower developers, businesses and governments to solve complex challenges. AI71 builds secure, enterprise-ready applications powered by cutting-edge technology-tailored for knowledge workers and sector-specific needs. AI71 bridges the gap between advanced AI and real-world impact. Guided by a strong commitment to research and responsibility, we create transformative solutions that drive progress and empower communities.

The Role:

As ai71 scales across the region, commercial is where platform capability becomes revenue - and in regulated and sovereign markets, that translation is slow, relational, and high-stakes. The Head of Commercial owns it end-to-end: sales, go-to-market, commercial partnerships, and customer success for Ask. You'll inherit a small team operating today mostly as customer success, and build from it a real commercial engine: the operating model, the pipeline discipline, and the incentive structure that don't yet exist.

This is deliberately not a growth-at-all-costs role. In frontier agentic AI, the binding constraint isn't demand - it's how fast the product and the organisation can absorb, deliver, and learn. Your job is to win the right clients, in the right sequence, and turn each into a reference that compounds. You'll partner as closely with Product on which clients to take and when as you will with clients on how to buy, and hand each signed deal cleanly to Deployments to deliver.

What You'll Do:

As Head of Commercial you're the senior commercial owner for Ask - equally credible in a ministry procurement office, a bank's risk committee, and your own forecast review. Your remit spans four areas:

Commercial strategy & go-to-market

Own the commercial strategy for Ask across regulated-enterprise and sovereign segments - in our anchor markets (UAE, Morocco) and in prioritised expansion markets.

• Translate Ask's agentic capabilities into offers, pricing, and go-to-market plays that land with regulated and government buyers.
• Own client selection, with Product - choosing lighthouse accounts that strengthen the product and become references, and pacing intake to what the organisation can deliver and learn from. Qualifying out is part of the job.
• Feed structured market and client insight back into the Ask product roadmap, packaging, and prioritisation.

Deals & pipeline

Own the Ask pipeline end-to-end, from sourcing and qualification to close, with forecasting you'd stake your name on.

• Personally lead negotiation of Ask's most complex, high-value contracts - License Agreements, SLAs, AUPs, DPAs, and Order Forms - through long, multi-stakeholder government and regulated procurement (RFP / RFQ, vendor qualification, security and regulatory review).
• Structure commercial terms specific to agentic risk - data access, autonomy boundaries, usage scope, and liability - in a way that protects ai71 while keeping deals moving, partnering with Legal to resolve contractual and regulatory risk.

Clients & commercial partnerships

Own the post-signature relationship for a small set of high-value accounts - retention, executive continuity, and reference-building - and drive expansion into new use cases alongside Deployments, who lead delivery. Build and manage a focused partner ecosystem (technology, channel, systems integrators, in-market counterparts) and own the governance that turns partnerships into real pipelines, not logos on a slide.

Scaling the commercial function

• Develop the commercial operating model from the ground up: pipeline stages, qualification bar, forecasting cadence, CRM hygiene, and bid management.
• Design and own the incentive architecture - quotas, targets, and bonuses suited to few, large, long-cycle deals. None exist today; you'll build them with BizOps and Finance
• Report commercial performance - pipeline health, conversion, revenue, and major deals - to executive leadership and the board.

What You'll Bring:

You bring 12+ years in commercial strategy, deal structuring, or business development, including 4+ years leading a commercial team - team management is a must. You've sold to regulated and sovereign buyers (financial services, defence, government) and know their procurement from the inside: RFP / RFQ, vendor qualification, security and regulatory review, and multi-stakeholder approval. You're ideally fluent in Arabic, French, and English, with the cultural fluency to hold the room at executive level across the UAE, Morocco, and the wider region. You've negotiated complex enterprise or government contracts through to signature, and ideally you've designed commercial operating models and incentive structures from scratch. 

Great Pluses / Preferred Experience 

• A real grasp of the agentic AI market - landscape, buyer maturity, and emerging commercial models - is a strong plus
• Experience commercialising agentic or usage-based software.
• Commercial judgement: You qualify hard and sell selectively. You'd rather win three references that compound than ten deals the organisation can't deliver - and you can tell the difference early.
• Deal-making: You're at your best in the room on the hardest terms: reading the table, holding your position, and finding the structure that gets everyone to signature without giving away the store.
• Relationships: You build trust with technical and non-technical stakeholders at every level, up to ministers and C-suites, and you know how MENA government and regulated buyers actually decide.
• Builder: You have a keen sense of ownership and can point to functions that wouldn't exist without you. Not running someone else's playbook - writing your own.Clarity: You connect the dots others miss, and you turn a messy pipeline into a forecast leadership can trust and a board can read.

Why AI71:

• Mission-Driven Work: Work on cutting-edge AI applications with a talented and passionate team, solving real-world challenges in critical sectors.
• Unparalleled Opportunity: This is a chance to innovate and solve real-world challenges using AI at a company with unique access to world-leading models and resources.
• Career Growth: We offer competitive compensation, benefits, and significant career growth opportunities as a foundational member of the team.
• World-Class Environment: Enjoy a flexible working environment and the latest tools & technologies needed to do your best work.