CEO - AI Financial Platform

Role overview

This is a senior leadership opportunity to create an entirely new financial platform from the ground up in the Gulf, with the launch planned from the UAE. The business is not a thin digital layer on top of an existing bank or another card-led neobank; it is an AI-native platform designed around how the next generation lives and manages money.

The role is for the executive who will shape the company’s direction, build the founding team, and take the platform to market. You will have meaningful autonomy, strong backing, and the resources needed to build properly.

What the platform is building

The product is envisioned as a youth-focused financial superapp for the 18–30 audience in the UAE and beyond. Banking, investing, trading, and crypto are intended to feel like a unified experience rather than separate services. The ambition is regional at launch, with global potential over time. The regulatory setup, infrastructure, and a strategic partnership with a top consulting firm are already in place.

Ownership and scope

• Set the end-to-end proposition, including the vision, product direction, brand, commercial model, and overall P&L.
• Help recruit the founding team and shape the organisation from the earliest stages.
• Work directly with one of the region’s most senior executives.
• Lead with the independence, budget, and support required to build a market-ready business.

Profile of the right leader

The ideal candidate has already created a consumer-facing business from scratch and understands how to define a proposition, choose the target audience, explain the value, and bring it to market. This is not a role for someone who simply executed a rollout of an existing product, led a small startup, or acted as a country GM following someone else’s playbook.

You should be able to operate as both builder and executive: fluent in customer acquisition, Gen Z behaviour, commercial strategy, and unit economics, while also bringing the financial-services credibility needed to speak confidently at board level. A strong instinct for product and brand is important, along with the ability to make something a 25-year-old would genuinely want to use every day.

Relevant experience may currently include serving as a CPO, CMO, or Chief Growth Officer at a leading consumer fintech, or as the CEO of a mid-sized digital financial platform that you helped define from the outset. The organisation is looking for someone at a stage beyond a very small startup, but still hands-on and entrepreneurial enough to build something new at scale.

The platform is AI-native by design, so the leader should understand AI as the operating model rather than just a feature. Experience shipping AI-native products and a clear view of how agentic infrastructure changes customer experience are important.

What matters most

• Evidence of creating consumer propositions from zero, including the value proposition, audience definition, and go-to-market approach.
• Strong intuition for Gen Z customers and how to earn their attention and trust.
• Real AI-native experience, including hands-on building rather than only conceptual familiarity.
• Credibility in financial services such as banking, payments, crypto, or investing, ideally within regulated environments.
• Leadership experience that includes hiring, team building, and scaling high-performing groups.
• A long-term mindset suited to a multi-year build with committed institutional backing.

Why this opportunity stands out

The organisation behind the initiative has substantial financial support and the mandate to operate with startup-style agility. It offers genuine independence, senior sponsorship, a strategic partner already involved, and a regulatory foundation already established.

The business is looking for the person who can turn that platform into a category-defining company.

Additional information

Location details provided for this role indicate Singapore, Singapore, while the leadership mandate is described as being based in the UAE.