The Senior Executive Roles of the Future

Three new clients came to me this week. A regional chief executive. A senior leader in digital transformation. A chief human resources officer. They work in different sectors and sit at different stages of their careers. All three are ready for a bigger challenge, and all three asked me the same question.

How?

How do I secure a new executive role in the UAE? How can I have more impact and influence in my role? How do I build a leadership brand that opens doors?

These questions are sharper this year. Worldwide, hiring is running nearly 20% below pre-pandemic levels. Yet 52% of professionals say they are looking for a new job in 2026, and nearly 80% feel unprepared to find one. Strong leaders are hearing very little back from their applications. The senior roles are still being filled. They have gone underground.

Where the roles went

Senior appointments run on trust. When a vacancy opens at the top, a chief executive knows a wrong hire can cost a year, sometimes a strategy. So the search starts with a quiet question to someone they trust, long before any advertisement.

One 2026 survey of senior leaders found that referrals from an existing network were the largest single source of executive placements, at 36%. AI has sharpened the effect. When every application is polished by the same tools, a recommendation from someone the chief executive already knows carries far more weight.

Most leaders start with volume: two hundred applications, a refreshed LinkedIn profile, a long wait. The ones who land fastest start with relationships in week one.

Where the UAE is hiring right now

The UAE goes into the final quarter of 2026 as one of the strongest hiring markets in Europe and the Middle East. Four industries are leading, and each is tied to a national ambition. That is why the leadership roles inside them will last.

Advanced manufacturing. A country that makes more of what it needs depends less on supply chains it cannot control. That is the logic of Operation 300bn, which aims to more than double the industrial sector’s contribution to GDP by 2031. Companies here want operators who have taken a plant from launch to scale before and can do it again.

Defence and aerospace. Sovereignty runs through this sector. The UAE designs, builds and exports its own capability, and EDGE Group now sells most of what it makes abroad. Leaders who can run complex programmes with international partners are scarce anywhere. Here they are wanted at speed.

Financial services. Global capital has chosen Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Sovereign funds, family offices and asset managers followed the wealth and talent that moved here. They need people to build institutions: risk, governance, investment and regional leadership answerable to a global board.

AI and digital transformation. The UAE appointed the world’s first Minister of State for AI in 2017. I see the pace up close in my work with the UAE Prime Minister’s Office, designing agentic AI government services the private sector now uses as a benchmark. Every organisation here is being asked to match it, and leaders who can bring people through that change are in short supply.

Among executives surveyed by Cooper Fitch, 40% said the local market cannot meet their leadership requirements, particularly for transformation roles. For eight years I have opened my network to executives relocating here, most from Australia, the United States and Singapore. Leading companies and semi-government entities keep asking me one thing: who do you know with this expertise?

Four roles taking shape

In 2019 I became the world’s first Chief Futurist. Nobody had held the title before NEOM created it. Many roles opening now are just as new. The World Economic Forum expects 170 million new jobs to be created worldwide by 2030, with 22% of today’s jobs disrupted along the way. Globally, 62% of employers hiring this quarter say changing roles and skills are the reason. Only 32% are backfilling.

Four are taking shape across the industries above:

Chief AI Officer. Decides where AI earns its place in the business, and answers to the board when it misfires.

Head of Human and AI Performance. People and intelligent systems now share the work. This leader designs how, and protects the judgement a company cannot afford to lose.

Industrial Scale-up Executive. Takes a new plant, product or programme from launch to export.

Head of AI Governance and Trust. Regulators, boards and customers need confidence in autonomous systems. This role sets the guardrails that earn it.

Each needs a leader who keeps their own judgement as machines take on more of the work. My doctoral research with 6,000 executives measured that capability. It is also the hardest thing to read from a CV.

Five moves for the next ninety days

The first ninety days set the pace of any senior search. These are the five moves I am working through with all three new clients.

1. Name the role in one sentence. One title, one type of organisation, one geography. A precise target gives the people who want to help you something to act on.

2. Write down the twenty people who decide. Chief executives, chairs, board members and investors who would sign off your appointment, or who sit one conversation away. If you cannot name twenty, start there.

3. Rebuild your story for the role being created. Say what changes in the business in your first year, in two sentences, using your last role as the evidence. If the title is new, show how your career prepared you for it.

4. Ask for introductions in sequence. An introduction is spent once. Start where you are strongest and let each conversation earn the next. Five introductions made in order will reach more of the right people than twenty cold messages.

5. Stay visible. An advisory role, a board seat, a piece of writing, a talk. When a role opens, the leaders still in the conversation are the names that come up first.

So, how?

Every senior role now demands one capability above the rest: building trust with people who owe you nothing. Your search tests it before any interview does. That is the answer I gave all three clients this week, and it is where the work begins.

If you are preparing for one of the senior executive roles of the future, I work with senior executives on six- and twelve-month coaching programmes. We set the target, map the people who decide, and I make introductions where they serve the objective. The first conversation is confidential and without obligation.

References

LinkedIn Economic Graph, global labour market report, January 2026. World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025. Close Cohen Career Consulting, 2026 Executive Transition Report. ManpowerGroup Employment Outlook Survey, Q4 2026, UAE and global findings. Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology, Operation 300bn industrial strategy, results reported by Khaleej Times, 10 June 2026. EDGE Group, results statement, 4 May 2026, reported by WAM. Cooper Fitch, UAE hiring survey, reported by Khaleej Times, 2 December 2025.