As the rest of the world battles the disruptive impact of AI on jobs, the UAE is set to emerge as a beacon of hope. According to KPMG’s UAE Tech Report 2026, technology organizations in the gulf nation are not just avoiding cuts, they are actively planning to grow their local tech talent onboarding at a pace that leaves global peers far behind.
This offers a stark contrast to Silicon Valley and European tech hubs spending the last couple of years announcing wave after wave of layoffs.
Good news ahead for tech talent in the UAE
The report released Wednesday, surveyed senior technology leaders across government, financial services, energy, healthcare, manufacturing and technology sectors. It found that 54 percent of UAE organizations plan to hire more onshore technology talent over the next twelve months. This comfortably beats the global average which sits at just 36 percent.
The push in hiring isn’t a standalone metric. It’s part of a broader recalculation by companies in the UAE which are reassessing their technology infrastructure. Who supplies it, who builds it, and who secures it.
The companies that are most likely to hire are also the ones planning to step up data sovereignty audits across their partner ecosystems
Robert Ptaszynski, Partner and Head of Technology, KPMG Middle East, said: “UAE organizations understand that in a more complex geopolitical environment, how you build your technology ecosystem matters as much as what you build. Most markets are still debating how to respond to a more fragmented world. What we see in the UAE is organizations that have already decided and are acting on it. The move toward onshore talent, data sovereignty, and tighter supply chain scrutiny reflects a leadership approach that treats resilience and innovation as two sides of the same strategy.”
Here’s what the numbers say about UAE’s tech sector
The move to strengthen the technology supply chain runs deep. Nearly half of UAE organizations intend to reduce their dependence on enterprise software licenses in favor of open-source alternatives, compared with 31 percent globally. Meanwhile, 43 percent plan to apply tighter geographic scrutiny to their cybersecurity partners and suppliers, and 41 percent are moving to reduce technology exposure to adversarial nations entirely.
This strategic vision arises out of the UAE’s commitment towards building a resilient AI ecosystem with 90 percent of the nation’s organizations ranking in the top two resilient tiers globally, and 66 percent report optimized cybersecurity capabilities against a global benchmark of 51 percent. This is also reflected in the country’s leadership’s recent push into agentic AI driven governance.
UAE organizations also lead the world in flagging AI transparency as a forward-looking concern, with 34 percent ranking it among their top priorities – the highest of any market surveyed. Additionally, 32 percent identify intellectual property exposure through open-source adoption as a current risk, suggesting that even as they move away from service provider dependencies, they are doing so with a clear mind about its tradeoffs.
Taken together, the data suggests that the UAE market has already moved past the adoption stage and is now focusing entirely on execution. And that’s something the UAE excels at.