Lead Digital Business Development Specialist

About the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB)

The Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) is a multilateral development finance institution focused on fostering economic development and social progress in its member countries and Muslim communities worldwide. Based in Jeddah, IsDB is committed to leveraging digital solutions to achieve its strategic objectives.

The Role of Lead Digital Business Development Specialist

The Lead Digital Business Development Specialist is responsible for developing and implementing digital solutions that align with the organization's digital strategy and objectives. This contract-based role involves identifying and cultivating strategic partnerships with key stakeholders, including technology vendors, platforms, and industry partners. The specialist will provide leadership and guidance to software development teams, ensuring projects are delivered on time, within budget, and to the required quality standards.

Key Accountabilities and Responsibilities

• Provide guidance, mentorship, and technical expertise to the development team, ensuring adherence to best practices and standards.
• Lead the planning, execution, and delivery of development projects, including defining project scope, timelines, and resource allocation.
• Drive the architectural design and technical approach for development projects, ensuring scalability, reliability, and performance.
• Conduct code reviews, ensure code quality and adherence to coding standards, and implement quality assurance processes.
• Foster a collaborative and inclusive team environment, encouraging knowledge sharing, innovation, and continuous improvement.
• Collaborate with stakeholders, including product managers, business analysts, and clients, to understand requirements and priorities, and communicate project progress and technical solutions effectively.
• Identify and mitigate technical risks and challenges, proactively addressing issues to ensure project success.
• Create and maintain technical documentation, including design documents, architectural diagrams, and code documentation, to support knowledge transfer and future maintenance.
• Evaluate new technologies and tools and make recommendations for their adoption to improve development processes and outcomes.
• Identify performance bottlenecks and optimize code and infrastructure to improve application performance and scalability.
• Collaborate with the Enterprise Architect on alignment of platforms and support collaboration with the Business to build and strengthen the architecture pillars, mainly those tied to the business (*, Information and Application architecture).
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives, including process optimization, tooling enhancements, and automation, to increase efficiency and effectiveness in development processes.
• Ensure that the related department’s demands adhere to the demand intake process with a strong business case in place and plan to ensure the annual work plan is based on a good foundation for planning and implementation.
• Manage the end-to-end solution delivery for the product group, according to agile methodologies, from solution design, to delivery, operations, and maintenance to ensure the quality at each stage gate meets the expected outcome and execution meets the deadlines through the life cycle of the implementation, and ensure the reliability, the timely resolution of raised issues, and the satisfaction of business users with the applications and services provided.
• Manage and ensure the effective achievement of functional objectives through leadership of the Team. This includes setting Team and individual objectives, conducting regular meetings, managing performance, developing and motivating staff, provision of formal and informal feedback, and appraisal to maximize subordinates and Team performance.
• Review the prioritized business, functional, and technical requirements and provide feedback to the Business Analyst and Business Relationship Manager based on product subject-matter expertise.
• Understand immediate technology priorities, support innovation proofs of concept and trials, and recommend areas for Innovation Hub research and development.
• Coordinate product-level issues and escalate to the solution delivery manager when required to proactively ensure issues are managed with the stakeholders at the required pace.

Qualifications and Experience

Candidates for this role should possess a strong background in digital business development and software project leadership. A minimum of 10 years of relevant experience is required to effectively manage the complexities and responsibilities of this position.

Work Location

This position is based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.