News

Gulf AI Job Vacancies Nearly Triple, But Hiring Stays Lopsided

New GulfTalent data shows demand runs highest at the top: one in 12 senior leadership roles involves AI but few of the jobs require building models.

Published

3 weeks ago

July 19, 2026

Nour Nasir

gulf ai job vacancies nearly triple but hiring stays lopsided

AI hiring in the Gulf is accelerating fast and remains strikingly concentrated. AI-related duties, skills, or tools appeared in 3.4% of professional vacancies advertised across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar in the first half of 2026, according to new data from recruitment platform GulfTalent. That’s roughly one in every 30 jobs, up from 1.2% in 2022 — a near-tripling in four years.

Most of that growth sits in a handful of industries. Technology leads by a wide margin, with nearly one in three vacancies requiring AI-related skills or responsibilities. Banking and auditing follow at roughly one in 15. Oil and gas and real estate sit at about one in 30, while construction, retail, healthcare, manufacturing, education, and hospitality mention AI in one in 100 vacancies or fewer.

The trajectory tracks the technology itself. ChatGPT’s launch in late 2022 pushed generative AI into businesses, and the spread of workplace platforms such as Claude, Gemini, and Copilot over the past two years has sharpened demand for professionals who can actually use them.

Seniority is the other dividing line. Around one in 30 non-supervisory roles involves AI, against roughly one in 12 senior leadership positions — employers increasingly expect executives to lead AI strategy, adoption, and business transformation.

Also Read: The Most AI-Proof Career Opportunities In The Middle East

The roles themselves reach well beyond model-building, with a third requiring the use of AI in day-to-day work, another third involving the implementation of AI solutions across organizations, and a quarter being sales roles for AI products and services. Fewer than one in 10 are dedicated to building or training models, and demand is spreading to sales executives, marketers, product managers, consultants, and other business roles.

Internationally, GulfTalent’s 3.4% figure aligns with PwC’s finding that 3.2% of UAE vacancies required AI skills in 2025, and outpaces Stanford’s AI Index figures for the US (2.5%) and UK (1.9%). Singapore leads at 4.8%. The findings draw on 118,000 direct employer vacancies advertised between January 2022 and June 2026.

News

Samsung And Spotify Offer Free Premium Deal In MENA

Nearly seven in ten streams in the region come from 18-to-34-year-olds — the audience Samsung is hoping to entice into its ecosystem.

Published

4 days ago

August 7, 2026

Nour Nasir

Samsung

Samsung has announced a partnership with Spotify spanning the Middle East, North Africa, and Türkiye, bundling Spotify Premium with select devices across its ecosystem. The headline offer — up to four months of Premium for free — is a first for the region.

Customers in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Türkiye who buy any OLED or 98-inch television, or any Galaxy S or Z series mobile device, get four months of Spotify Premium. The offer, tiered by market and device, is available at retail and on Samsung.com, and redeemed through the Samsung Promotion and Samsung Members apps.

For Samsung, the strategy is less about free music than about lock-in. The Korean tech giant’s pitch is continuity: a track starts on a Galaxy smartphone through Galaxy Buds on the commute, moves to a Samsung TV and soundbar in the living room, and stays controllable from a Galaxy Watch. The more seamlessly music travels between those devices, the harder it becomes to swap any one of them for a rival’s.

“Technology should bring people closer to the things they love, and few things connect people the way music does,” said Omar Saheb, Regional VP of Marketing and Online Business at Samsung Electronics MENA. The partnership, he added, gives customers “a genuine reason to choose Samsung for the experience, not only the product”.

Also Read: Shokz OpenFit Pro Review: Open-Ear Audio Finally Grows Up

For subscribers, Premium brings the usual package: ad-free listening, offline downloads, richer audio quality on Galaxy Buds and Samsung sound devices, and Jam, which lets friends build a shared queue.

“At Spotify, we are always working to make every listening moment feel more personal, meaningful, and worth it,” said Rami Jamal, Head of Partnerships at Spotify for South Asia, Middle East, and Africa.

The demographics go a long way to explaining the strategy. Across MENA, Türkiye, and Pakistan, nearly seven in ten Spotify streams come from listeners aged 18 to 34, according to the company — precisely the audience Samsung wants inside its hardware ecosystem before buying habits harden.