Hashim Mahmood joins from TikTok to lead a workforce of 200+ people and 180+ AI agents

DUBAI, UAE, 15 July 2026. FAST, the Dubai headquartered Marketing technology group, today announced the appointment of Hashim Mahmood as Head of People and Culture. His remit covers the group’s human teams and the 180 AI agents now working alongside them.

FAST runs 180 AI agents across its companies. The agents carry the work that was holding growth back, and the group is hiring more people now than at any point in its history. Mahmood’s job is to make the two work together.

Mahmood joins from TikTok/ByteDance, where he served as Regional HR Director for METAP (Middle East, Turkey, Africa and Pakistan) and CSA (Central and South Asia) – one of the platform’s most complex and commercially significant territory clusters. He brings extensive experience building people functions and organisational capability at scale across high growth and emerging markets.

In his new role, Mahmood will lead FAST’s people agenda across the group’s ecosystem of companies, including Platformance, PULSR, PerformR, Radius, LION, MATTE MENA and Calibrate Commerce. Alongside culture, leadership and talent, he owns the question of how human teams and AI agents are structured, managed and measured together. Most companies are adding AI to jobs that already exist. FAST built the group with agents inside the operating model, which puts a set of people questions in front of the business earlier than most.

Waseem Afzal, Founder and CEO of FAST, said: “We are hiring more AI equipped people now than at any point in our history, and the agents are the reason why. They take on the work that was holding the business back, which frees our teams to do the work that grows it. That is how we get ten times out of the same business. It also creates a management problem that nobody has a manual for. Hashim has built people functions inside one of the world’s fastest growing technology companies, in some of the most demanding markets there are. That is the experience this job needs.”

Hashim Mahmood, Head of People and Culture, commented:“Every company is being told that AI is changing how they work. Few have had to answer what that means for their people on a Monday morning. FAST has 180+ agents across the business and is hiring more people than ever, which tells you the two work together. The questions that arise are real and largely unanswered. How do you build a team when part of its capacity is software? What does a career look like, and what counts as good work, when routine work is already handled? I would rather work on those questions here than read about them in someone else’s case study five years from now.”

About FAST

FAST is a Dubai headquartered, marketing first technology group built as a region native alternative to traditional holding companies. Its interconnected ecosystem spans outcomes based marketing (Platformance), affiliate and coupon driven marketing (PULSR), the creator economy (PerformR), unified retail media buying (Radius), AI enabled creative (LION), AI agents and automation (MATTE MENA), and early stage growth (Calibrate Commerce). FAST partners with brands across MENA to deliver measurable, outcome based growth.