Infrastructure-adjacent AI roles stay in the Gulf; the portable work is routing to Egypt and Jordan

The sourcing for the GCC’s AI talent needs are splitting along whether the work has to sit next to the physical infrastructure. The roles tied to the AI build across the GCC — cloud architecture, cybersecurity, compliance — have to stay close to the infrastructure for security, regulation, and data-sovereignty reasons, TASC Outsourcing Chief Business Officer Anil Singh tells EnterpriseAM. The rest — software development, data operations, model fine-tuning — is increasingly being sourced from Egypt and Jordan. The result, Singh says, is a regional workforce model with infrastructure teams in the GCC and specialist technical talent distributed across MENA.

Inside Saudi’s talent market

Budgeting is now the main driver of Saudi businesses’ hiring strategy as they enter AI execution mode. Headcount is still growing, but hiring managers have to justify every role, Unicorn Talent CEO Zeina Karrit tells EnterpriseAM. “The market has moved into execution mode, so hiring managers now have to explain why a role exists, what it will deliver in its first year, and whether someone already in the team could step into it,” she says.

The test for approving new roles is narrow: “If a role clearly helps the business sell, build something or stay compliant, it has a much better chance of being approved.” Data engineers, cloud architects, and cybersecurity specialists are the most sought-after hires, Karrit says — the same roles Singh flags as the ones that can’t be outsourced overseas due to regulatory requirements. Meanwhile, on-site hiring is seeing the sharpest slowdown in sectors like construction and engineering-led projects.

Compliance is where there remains a bottleneck. The hardest roles to fill aren’t purely technical, Singh says — they’re the ones that bridge the technology and the regulatory regime it runs in. Professionals who can translate data residency, privacy, and AI governance rules into decisions about how data is stored, processed, and used to train models are as scarce as the pure technical hires, and a single hire rarely has both capabilities.

This is where the Saudization premium is hardening into a structural cost. The pool of experienced Saudi nationals and Arabic-speaking specialists for these on-site roles is small, Karrit says, so companies compete for the same people and pay a premium.

But pay alone isn’t the only lever: “A clear next step, real responsibility, and a feeling of being invested” are what keep them, she says. The firms that treat Saudization as part of a multi-year talent plan — graduate programs, knowledge transfer from expat specialists, succession planning — do better than those treating it as a compliance box.

The portable work is routing across MENA

Egypt and Jordan are picking up the work the GCC doesn’t need on-site. The two countries are emerging as “complementary talent markets rather than direct competitors” to the GCC, Singh says, with strength in engineering, software development, data operations, and model fine-tuning. For employers, the immediate question is which roles genuinely need to be on-site and which can be sourced regionally without compromising security, speed, or operational control.

REMEMBER- Egypt and Jordan are replicating a version of India’s 1995 outsourcing play: Egypt’s IT-enabled services sector is targeting USD 12 bn and 630k jobs by 2029, and Jordan is building the same play under the Jordan Source brand.

Our take

For GCC businesses, the mix of talent localization and on-site hiring mandates means upskilling is a critical business priority. The real bet is on upskilling existing teams because industry knowledge takes years to build and technical skills can be taught faster, Singh says. Karrit favors the same approach for the KSA talent gap. “There aren’t enough experienced AI specialists for every company to hire its way out, so upskill the people who already know the business and bring in a few senior specialists to lead,” she says.

Clear and sound workforce policies are also another critical priority, and they are not changing as fast as jobs change. As platform-based and technology-enabled roles grow, employers and regulators need clearer standards around contracts, pay, working conditions, and employee protections, Singh says. Reskilling and workforce protections need to progress at the same pace as technology adoption, or businesses risk building a workforce technically prepared for new roles but inadequately supported by the structures governing them, he adds.

What’s next: The firms best positioned for 2027, Karrit says, are those with a clear long-term direction and a solid commercial business behind them — AI and data infrastructure companies, telecom operators, fintechs, and manufacturers investing in digital operations. Watch for the Saudization premium on on-site infrastructure roles to stay elevated through the next budget cycle, and for Egypt and Jordan to pick up more of the portable work as GCC employers rationalize headcount.