Head of Business Planning
Location: Dubai
Employment Type: Full Time
Overview
An opportunity is available for a Head of Business Planning to lead strategic planning, financial modelling, and performance oversight within a dynamic energy-focused organisation. This role plays a key part in shaping long-term strategy, driving business planning cycles, and providing executive-level insights to senior leadership.
You will work closely with executive stakeholders to ensure alignment between strategy, operations, and financial performance, while supporting growth, investment decisions, and portfolio optimisation.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Planning
- Lead development of short- and long-term business plans, including the annual 5-year plan
- Ensure alignment between business plans, corporate strategy, and organisational objectives
- Define targets, assess deliverability, and identify risks within planning frameworks
- Monitor global industry trends and assess their impact on strategy
- Support business units in developing aligned strategies
Forecasting and Financial Modelling
- Develop scenario-based financial models to assess risk and opportunity
- Ensure alignment between business plans, financial forecasts, and operational plans
- Oversee portfolio performance across upstream assets and investments
- Assess new business opportunities, markets, and strategic partnerships
- Evaluate business models and portfolio robustness against strategic objectives
- Provide market insights including commodity outlooks and macroeconomic factors
- Maintain and update economic models and provide structured analysis
- Review development plans to ensure strong and viable business cases
- Identify resource constraints and planning requirements
Governance and Reporting
- Coordinate business planning inputs across departments
- Provide challenge and assurance on planning assumptions and outputs
- Prepare reports on performance, risks, and progress for senior stakeholders
- Support preparation of executive and board-level presentations
- Establish and maintain governance frameworks for planning processes
- Ensure alignment between business planning and budgeting cycles
- Contribute to development of corporate policies and strategic initiatives
- Support investment evaluation and approval processes
Insights and Continuous Improvement
- Conduct analysis to identify trends, risks, and performance improvement opportunities
- Develop insights across the asset value chain to support value creation
- Support mergers, acquisitions, divestments, and joint venture activities
- Benchmark performance against industry peers
- Identify underperforming areas and recommend improvement strategies
- Drive improvements in planning processes, tools, and systems
- Review implementation of strategic initiatives and assess outcomes
- Support sustainability and corporate responsibility initiatives
- Mentor and develop team members and support succession planning
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Business, Finance, or related discipline
- Minimum 12 years of experience in business planning, strategy, or commercial finance within the energy sector
- Strong experience in financial modelling, forecasting, and strategic planning
- Experience managing business plans and performance scorecards
- Strong understanding of upstream oil and gas or energy portfolios
- Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills
- Strong leadership and stakeholder management capability
- Experience working with senior leadership and executive teams
- Strong communication and presentation skills
Additional Information
- Leadership role with responsibility for a small team
- High level of autonomy with strategic input into business direction
- Involvement in executive and board-level decision making