IP Manager And Patent Manager

Job purpose

To lead and manage the organization’s intellectual property (IP) and patent portfolio, ensuring strategic protection of innovations, competitive advantage, and regulatory compliance. This role drives IP strategy, oversees patent drafting and filing processes, and partners with R&D and leadership teams to maximize the business value of intellectual assets.

Key accountability areas

• Direct the preparation of clear and technically accurate patent descriptions, claims, and supporting drawings to secure strong patent coverage.
• Manage collaboration between engineering teams, R&D, and external legal counsel to ensure timely patent filings across local and international jurisdictions.
• Establish and maintain robust processes for patent submissions, renewals, and documentation tracking.

• Lead ongoing monitoring of competitor patents, filings, and technology trends to identify potential threats and innovation opportunities.
• Oversee prior art searches and evaluate risks associated with potential infringements.
• Manage and maintain the company’s intellectual property portfolio, ensuring data accuracy and accessibility.

• Develop and implement a long-term IP strategy that aligns with organizational goals, product roadmaps, and R&D investments.
• Define and enforce policies to protect patents, trademarks, trade secrets, and proprietary technologies.
• Advise executive leadership on IP risks, opportunities, and partnerships to strengthen market positioning.

• Partner with product management, R&D, and business leaders to ensure IP initiatives support business objectives and product launches.
• Deliver IP awareness training, innovation workshops, and confidentiality best practices to engineering and product teams.
• Support negotiations for licensing agreements, partnerships, and legal disputes, providing IP expertise in decision-making.

• Lead and mentor a team of engineers, IP analysts, and specialists, fostering expertise in patent strategy and competitive intelligence.
• Set department KPIs and track progress to ensure quality, timeliness, and strategic alignment of all IP-related activities.
• Drive process improvement initiatives to enhance efficiency in patent drafting, filing, and enforcement.

Role accountability

• Ability to recruit, recognize, and cultivate high performers to create a robust second line of management.
• Ability to recognize low performers and guide them to improve or release them.
• Ability to treat subordinates equally without any discrimination.
• Assessment criteria of subordinates is performance that leads to planned results.
• Ensure availability of delegation of authority matrix to have sufficient delegations as per company policy.

• Must take full responsibility for operations as per the job description and the required deliverables from this position, taking into consideration the general company guidelines.
• Able to anticipate problems and make the necessary proactive steps to prevent them.
• Ability to take necessary and proper timely decisions.

• Deliver the required results in a timely manner with required quality and cost.

• Must make a tangible difference to the area of operation and exceed business expectations.

• Able to transform the corporate goals into business plans.
• Able to plan, follow up, and execute those plans, whether they are annual or development plans.
• Monitor the plan performance and initiate action to strengthen results and take corrective action accordingly.
• Provide periodic work progress reports.
• Responsible for monitoring and controlling budgets and expenses to achieve optimum cost efficiency.

• Develop the organizational structure according to current requirements, taking into consideration future and development plans.
• Ensure availability of job descriptions for all job roles and deployment.

• Develop and coordinate well-defined written systems, policies, and procedures, and seek automation opportunities as much as possible.
• Should be conversant and able to navigate through IT solutions especially those relevant to the job and business.
• Promote automated systems and use them fully to spread their culture.

Quality is considered the company’s prime competitive advantage; as such, managers are expected to act accordingly.

Adapt to new and alternative techniques, technologies, management structures, and business models.

Ensure a safe, secure, and legal work environment as per standard regulations.

Academic qualification

Bachelor degree in electrical engineering or any relevant field.

Work experience

6 to 10 years

Technical / functional competencies

• Quality compliance
• Quality metrics
• Quality tools and techniques
• Engineering research
• Research design
• Research analysis
• Technical research