Director Of Human Resources

Job description / Role

About Saadiyat Rotana Resort & Villas

Set along the pristine coastline of Saadiyat Island, Saadiyat Rotana Resort & Villas is a five-star luxury beachfront resort offering 327 rooms and suites, including 13 private beach villas, together with seven distinctive dining venues. The resort features extensive leisure and wellness facilities, including Zen the Spa, a lagoon-style pool, tennis and padel courts, and dedicated family facilities.

We are seeking an experienced, dynamic, and commercially minded Director of Human Resources to lead the resort’s people agenda and partner closely with the general manager and leadership team in driving colleague engagement, organizational effectiveness, and operational performance.

The role

As Director of Human Resources, you will have overall responsibility for the human resources function, ensuring effective people practices, strong colleague engagement, and full alignment with Rotana standards and UAE employment requirements.

Key responsibilities will include:

• Lead the overall HR strategy in line with the resort’s business and operational objectives.
• Drive manpower planning, recruitment, and talent acquisition, ensuring the resort attracts and retains the right talent.
• Manage manpower budgets and support effective payroll and workforce cost control.
• Champion colleague engagement, welfare, recognition, and retention initiatives.
• Drive performance management, succession planning, and talent development across the resort.
• Coach and advise department heads on employee relations, performance, disciplinary matters, and HR best practices.
• Ensure consistent implementation of Rotana HR policies, procedures, and corporate standards.
• Maintain strong HR governance and compliance with UAE labour legislation.
• Oversee colleague welfare and accommodation standards and ensure a positive colleague experience.
• Work closely with learning and development and operational leaders to strengthen capability and build the internal talent pipeline.
• Partner with the general manager and executive committee as a trusted HR advisor, ensuring people decisions support guest experience and overall business performance.

Requirements

Our ideal candidate

We are looking for an accomplished hospitality HR leader who can combine a strong people focus with the commercial and operational understanding required in a luxury resort environment.

The successful candidate should ideally have:

• A university degree in human resources, business administration, hospitality management, or a related discipline.
• Strong senior HR leadership experience within the hotel or resort industry, ideally in a luxury or large-scale operation.
• Solid knowledge of UAE labour legislation and local HR practices.
• Proven experience in manpower planning, recruitment, employee relations, performance management, colleague engagement, and talent development.
• Strong understanding of hotel operations, payroll, and manpower cost management.
• Excellent leadership, communication, influencing, and relationship-building skills.
• A hands-on and visible leadership style, with the ability to engage colleagues at all levels.
• High levels of integrity, discretion, and professional judgment.
• Fluency in English; Arabic would be an advantage.

Key competencies

In line with Rotana’s HR leadership framework, the successful candidate should demonstrate strong capability in understanding the business, planning for business, valuing diversity, customer focus, influencing outcomes, team building, leading people, managing operations, adaptability, and drive for results.