Emirati Talent- Manager, Mechanical Design – Majid Al Futtaim

Majid Al Futtaim’s Development unit is hiring a Manager of Mechanical Design as part of its Emirati Talent program – a technical leadership role responsible for mechanical system design quality across the group’s development projects, spanning the shopping centres, residential communities, and mixed-use developments that make up Majid Al Futtaim’s property portfolio.

The role covers overseeing mechanical system designs – HVAC, plumbing, fire protection, and related building systems – across projects in design and construction, ensuring design quality, constructability, and sustainability standards are met before and during build-out. It’s a role that sits between design consultants, contractors, and Majid Al Futtaim’s own project teams, requiring technical judgment to catch design issues before they become expensive construction problems.

It suits an experienced mechanical engineer with a strong background in building services design, who’s comfortable reviewing and challenging design proposals from external consultants, and who wants to build a career managing technical design quality across a varied, large-scale development portfolio.

Mechanical system design decisions made early in a development project - HVAC capacity, plumbing layout, fire protection systems - are expensive and disruptive to change once construction is underway, which makes this Manager, Mechanical Design role one of the more consequential technical checkpoints in Majid Al Futtaim's development process. Catching a design flaw or a constructability issue before it reaches site protects both project budget and schedule, two things that compound quickly across a large mixed-use development. Mechanical systems also have a direct effect on a completed building's operating costs and sustainability credentials, both of which matter to Majid Al Futtaim's long-term asset performance once a project moves from construction into operation. Given the scale and variety of the group's development pipeline, strong technical oversight at this level has a meaningful, compounding effect on overall portfolio quality and cost efficiency. It also protects the group's reputation with the contractors and consultants it works with repeatedly across projects, since a reputation for rigorous, fair technical review tends to raise the quality of what gets proposed in the first place.

Managing mechanical design quality across a varied development portfolio - shopping centres, residential communities, mixed-use projects - builds a breadth of technical experience that's harder to come by at a firm focused on a single building type, and that breadth is a genuine asset for an engineer's long-term career. Being part of Majid Al Futtaim's Emirati Talent program specifically means structured development support aimed at building long-term UAE national technical leadership within the group, which is a meaningfully different trajectory from a standard design engineering hire. Engineers who build a strong track record in this kind of role typically progress toward senior technical management or director-level positions overseeing design quality across an even broader project portfolio. The experience of reviewing and challenging external consultants' designs also builds a specific kind of technical authority and negotiation skill that's highly valued by developers and major contractors across the UAE's construction and real estate sector, making this experience hold real weight even for engineers who eventually move to a different employer. The Emirati Talent structure behind this role also means a more deliberate development path than a standard technical hire typically receives, with mentorship and project exposure specifically designed to build long-term Emirati engineering leadership within the group.

• UAE National, per the Emirati Talent scope of this role
• Degree in Mechanical Engineering or a closely related discipline
• Strong experience in building services or mechanical design, ideally across commercial or mixed-use developments
• Ability to review and challenge design proposals from external consultants and contractors
• Understanding of constructability and sustainability standards in building design
• Strong stakeholder management skills across design, construction, and project teams