Wael's CV
Wael Muhammad
Director of Data & AI delivery
Profile summary
Wael is an AI Expert & Data Strategy Leader with over 15 years of international experience in Artificial Intelligence, Data Architecture, Data Engineering, and Enterprise Digital Transformation. After more than a decade in senior leadership roles across Europe-including the Central Bank of Ireland, Mastercard, IBM, and Vodafone-he moved to Bahrain to lead strategic AI transformation initiatives, before relocating to Dubai to oversee major AI programmes across the public and private sectors. He joined stc Bahrain as Expert – Head of AI Initiatives, serving as Principal Architect and Programme Leader for Bahrain’s first National Sovereign AI initiative. Since July 2025, he has served as Director of Data & AI Delivery at Delphi Consulting, leading strategic agentic AI programmes for the UAE Ministry of Family, ADQCC, and M42. Combining deep technical expertise with executive-level strategy and supported by his academic background as a former university lecturer and Ph.D. researcher, Wa’el bridges research-driven innovation with measurable business and national impact.
Key skills
Professional experience
Leading the strategy, architecture oversight, and end-to-end delivery of enterprise AI and data programmes, with accountability for delivery governance, multidisciplinary teams, and customer success. Managing strategic agentic AI initiatives for the UAE Ministry of Family and the ADQCC–M42 Asterisk Digital AI programme, translating business priorities into secure, scalable AI solutions.
- Leading the Ministry of Family’s AI-powered document intelligence initiative for People of Determination card applications, integrating medical-report extraction, rules-based validation, and human-in-the-loop review to support assessment workflows.
- Directing the ADQCC–M42 Asterisk Digital AI programme, bringing together AI agents, machine learning use cases, enterprise data foundations, and a unified digital platform within a sovereign Azure architecture.
- Overseeing solution architecture and delivery across Azure AI Foundry, Microsoft Fabric, Databricks, LLMs, and RAG, embedding security, data governance, responsible AI, and operational
Serving as the lead AI strategist and Principal Architect for stc Bahrain’s AI business portfolio, driving the design and commercialization of enterprise-grade AI solutions and national-scale sovereign AI initiatives aligned with Bahrain’s digital transformation agenda.
- Leading the architecture and execution of Bahrain’s first National Sovereign AI platform (“Guardian Shield”), enabling secure, ministry-level AI adoption across government entities
- Established AI as a new revenue-generating business line within stc, defining product strategy, GTM approach, and monetization models for Agentic AI, AI avatars, and sovereign SLM solutions
- Designing scalable, secure AI platforms integrating LLMs, RAG architectures, and agent-based systems tailored for enterprise and government use cases
- Driving partnerships with global AI vendors (e.g., NVIDIA ecosystem, AI startups) to accelerate deployment and position stc as a national AI leader
- Advising C-level leadership on AI strategy, investment prioritization, and market positioning within a rapidly evolving regional AI landscape
Led strategic AI & data modernization initiatives within the Central Bank of Ireland, driving the transition toward a secure, cloud-enabled enterprise architecture aligned with regulatory & financial sector governance standards.
- Directed the bank’s strategic migration to Microsoft Azure, establishing a modern, scalable Data & AI foundation for supervisory, regulatory, and financial stability functions
- Designed enterprise-wide data architecture frameworks to enhance regulatory reporting, risk analytics, and supervisory intelligence capabilities
- Led and mentored a multidisciplinary team of data professionals, strengthening cloud, AI, and advanced analytics capabilities within a highly regulated financial environment
- Ensured architectural alignment and interoperability with European Central Bank (ECB) standards, supporting cross-institutional data coherence and regulatory integration
Led the engineering and modernization of Mastercard’s analytics data platforms across the EMEA region, overseeing large-scale data transformation initiatives within a highly secure, performance-driven financial services environment.
- Directed a distributed team of senior data engineers across Europe and India, driving delivery excellence, operational resilience, and platform scalability
- Architected and governed enterprise-grade ELT frameworks supporting high-volume transactional analytics, with strict adherence to performance SLAs, data quality controls, lineage tracking, and governance standards
- Designed and delivered end-to-end architecture blueprints and implementation frameworks for regional data platform modernization
- Led a full-scale EMEA data localization program (2022/2023), ensuring regulatory compliance, cross-border data governance alignment, and secure regional infrastructure deployment.
Progressed through multiple strategic roles over six years at IBM, evolving from Data Architect to AI Subject Matter Expert and ultimately AI Support Experience Manager, leading AI-driven product innovation within complex enterprise environments.
- Led cross-functional engineering, analytics, and product teams delivering AI-powered enterprise solutions across global accounts
- Defined and executed AI product roadmaps aligned with business strategy, operational performance goals, and customer experience transformation
- Architected scalable data and analytics foundations enabling advanced BI, predictive analytics, and AI-enabled decision support systems
- Drove AI adoption initiatives across enterprise platforms including IBM i2 intelligence systems, Watson/Cognos, Maximo, TRIRIGA, and ELM ecosystems
- Integrated cloud and data technologies (IBM Cloud, SAP, Informatica, Snowflake, Python ELT, Collibra) to deliver secure, governed, and performance-optimized AI-enabled platforms.
Led enterprise data analytics and service delivery operations for the European Patent Office, overseeing mission-critical reporting and analytics platforms within a high-availability, performance-driven environment.
- Managed end-to-end data analytics service delivery, ensuring SLA compliance, operational resilience, and capacity alignment with infrastructure and enterprise IT teams
- Directed data migration and analytics platform enhancement initiatives, modernizing ETL pipelines and enterprise data marts to strengthen reporting and decision-support capabilities
- Implemented high-availability database architectures, performance monitoring frameworks, and Always-On configurations supporting critical SharePoint and enterprise systems
- Achieved and sustained 99%+ service availability, reinforcing data-driven decision-making and institutional operational continuity at the European Patent Office
Delivered a strategic data warehousing and centralized reporting transformation initiative for Al-Rayyan Media & Marketing Holding, establishing a scalable analytics foundation within a fast-paced enterprise environment.
- Designed and implemented a centralized Data Warehouse (DWH) architecture to consolidate multi-source enterprise data into a unified analytics platform
- Built cloud-enabled reporting services and executive dashboards to support data-driven decision-making across business units
- Conducted full data warehouse functional analysis, documentation, and requirements alignment with business stakeholders
- Administered and optimized enterprise SQL Server environments, including performance tuning, clustering, log shipping, and Always-On High Availability configurations
- Managed distributed database environments across multiple sites, ensuring operational continuity and infrastructure reliability
Progressed from Junior SQL DBA to Senior BI Engineer within Vodafone’s Anti-Money Laundering and Fraud Technology division, contributing to mission-critical financial data platforms supporting the M-PESA ecosystem and high-volume telecom operations.
- Played a key role in establishing enterprise Data Warehouse (DWH), High Availability (HA), and Disaster Recovery (DR) architectures supporting secure financial transaction monitoring and fraud analytics
- Engineered and maintained large-scale database environments processing terabytes of sensitive customer data with transaction volumes exceeding 1,000+ TPS
- Delivered robust reporting and analytics frameworks enabling AML, fraud detection, and operational oversight
- Managed full lifecycle database operations across multi-stage environments (Production, DR, Staging, Performance, QA, Development), totaling ~75TB of distributed data
- Combined database engineering, BI development, and DevOps responsibilities to sustain 24/7 high-availability performance.
Education
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) & Business Intelligence Analytics
ITI National Scholarship Program
B+ | B+ | Specialization: Information Systems