About the Role
R&D — Tech & AI Curriculum Designer
Subject Matter Expert · Hourly Engagement
CODED — The First Tech & AI Academy in the Arab World
About CODED
CODED is the first tech and AI academy in the Arab world, and the region's go-to place for technology and AI education. We build real technical capability — software engineering, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data science, and emerging technologies — across individuals, youth, and enterprises.
What we are building is talent density. Not headcount. Not volume. A concentrated pool of genuinely exceptional people, inside CODED and across the market we serve.
We only aspire to work with people who are excellent at what they do, and who raise the standard of everyone around them.
The Role
This is a research and development role for people who build things to find out whether they work.
CODED sells programmes to professionals and to enterprises. Before we can sell them, someone has to establish what is actually teachable, what outcome is actually achievable, and how long it actually takes. That is this role.
You experiment with technology hands-on — you build with it, break it, and push it — and you translate what you learn into initial programme outlines and educational outcomes that the Professional Segment team and the Business Development team can take to market with confidence.
The rule here is simple: nothing goes into an outline that you have not done yourself.
How this engagement works
This is not a part-time job. It is an hourly, project-based engagement.
- Paid per hour, against agreed scopes of work
- Engaged by subject — you apply for the area you are genuinely expert in
- Multiple experts work across different subjects simultaneously; you are not expected to cover everything
- Work is fragmented and flexible: a research sprint, an experiment, an outline, a validation review
- Fully remote-friendly, with occasional working sessions at CODED
Apply for the subject you are excellent at. We would rather have five genuine experts than one generalist.
Subject Areas
Apply against one or more of:
- Artificial Intelligence — LLMs, agents, automation, applied AI, AI tooling
- Full-Stack Development — modern web and application stacks
- Data Science — analytics, machine learning, data engineering, visualisation
- Cybersecurity — offensive, defensive, governance, cloud security
What You Will Do
I. Experimentation & Hands-On Research
- Build, test, and stress real projects in your subject area — not read about them
- Experiment with new tools, frameworks, models, and platforms as they emerge
- Establish what is genuinely learnable, in what sequence, and in how much time
- Identify where learners predictably struggle, and what actually unblocks them
- Document your findings honestly, including what did not work
II. Outlines & Educational Outcomes
- Produce initial programme and course outlines grounded in your experiments
- Define concrete, measurable learning outcomes — what a learner can do at the end
- Specify prerequisites, duration, tooling, environment requirements, and realistic difficulty
- Design projects, exercises, and assessments that prove the outcome was achieved
- Keep outlines current as the technology moves — in AI, a six-month-old outline is already stale
III. Supporting Professional Segment & BD
- Give the Professional Segment team validated outlines they can build full programmes from
- Give the BD team the technical substance they need to write credible enterprise proposals
- Translate deep technical material into language a non-technical client can understand and trust
- Advise on scoping when a client asks for something specific: is it feasible, how long, what is required
- Act as the technical reference point when a proposal needs defending
Objective: every outline we take to market is backed by someone who has actually done the work.
Why This Role Is Critical
Education companies fail when they sell outcomes they have not tested. The outline gets written from a blog post, the programme underdelivers, and the client does not come back.
This role is the difference between a curriculum that sounds impressive and one that works.
What We're Looking For
- Deep, current, hands-on expertise in at least one of: AI, full-stack development, data science, cybersecurity
- A builder — you experiment constantly and have the projects, repos, or writing to show it
- Genuinely current: you know what shipped this quarter, not what was true three years ago
- Strong AI fluency regardless of subject — all our curriculum is being rebuilt around it
- Able to structure knowledge: you can take something you know deeply and sequence it so someone else can learn it
- Excellent written English; clear technical writing is the main deliverable
- Teaching, mentoring, training, or technical writing experience is a strong advantage
- Comfortable working independently against a scope, hourly, without daily supervision
- Arabic is an advantage but not required
To Apply
Tell us:
- Which subject you are applying for
- What you have built or experimented with recently in that area — links preferred
- Your hourly rate expectation
- Your realistic availability per month
This is for people who are genuinely at the frontier of their subject and want to shape what the region learns next.