Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Abdulaziz Al Abdali
Digital transformation in Saudi government
I build government products that serve millions, with small teams focused on shipping.
Selected work
Things I built closely
2021 — 2024 · Product Manager — Lead of the analysis team
Najiz Payments
The challenge
The Ministry of Justice was collecting fees for 120+ judicial services manually. The challenge: build a unified payments engine with top-tier security.
The approach
Designed a stand-alone, reusable payments architecture. The core decision: idempotency-first — every operation gets a unique key so duplicates are impossible.
The outcome
35M monthly users, billions of SAR processed, and the #1 ministry in digital transformation in both 2023 and 2024.
2024 — 2025 · Digital Products Manager
Sadaf Platform
The challenge
Saudi tech companies struggled to access public-sector contracts despite the quality of their products.
The approach
Designed an objective framework to evaluate the technical maturity of companies — partnered with the Ministry of Finance to tie results to a priority-procurement policy.
The outcome
10,000+ companies assessed, a nationally adopted framework, and an active small-business track in government procurement.
2025 — present · Program Delivery Lead
Social Security Program (Daam)
The challenge
Modernize Social Security digitally for millions of beneficiaries, while managing a strategic partnership with Elm.
The approach
Built a 40+ specialist delivery team with end-to-end accountability over budget and delivery, on an agile cadence with continuous measurement.
The outcome
In flight — the program serves millions of citizens through an integrated digital platform.
Products & ventures
Products I helped ship
Ventures I co-founded
- نظم
- قِوام بيلدر
- Salam
Convictions
Things I learned by shipping
/01 Gov product starts with policy, not tech
Projects struggle when they start with "what tech do we have?" instead of "what regulation are we improving?". Clarity on the regulatory decision must precede the code.
/02 Small teams usually ship more
The best things I helped deliver came from small teams (7–12) where everyone understood the whole product. Large size without a unifying vision tends to slow delivery.
/03 Agree on measurement before building
I try not to greenlight a feature until we agree how we'll measure its success. Without a clear definition of success, it's hard to know whether what we shipped is actually good.
Available for select advisory work on digital transformation and government products.