FAST appoints Hashim Mahmood to lead people strategy across human-AI workforce

Dubai-headquartered marketing technology group FAST has appointed Hashim Mahmood as Head of People and Culture.

Mahmood joins from TikTok parent ByteDance, where he served as Regional HR Director and led HR business partnering across the Middle East, Turkey, Africa and Pakistan, as well as Central and South Asia. He had held the regional position since February 2020, according to his professional profile.

At FAST, Mahmood will lead the people agenda across the group’s portfolio of marketing, creative, commerce and technology businesses. His responsibilities will cover talent, leadership and organisational culture, alongside the way employees and AI agents are structured, managed and evaluated within the business.

People mandate extends to 180 AI agents

FAST said it currently operates more than 180 AI agents across its companies and is simultaneously expanding its human workforce. The company has not disclosed the specific functions performed by the agents, how independently they operate or the governance framework used to evaluate their output.

The appointment gives Mahmood an unusually broad people mandate. In addition to conventional HR priorities, he will be responsible for addressing questions created when software-based capacity becomes part of workforce planning and team design.

These include how managers allocate work between employees and AI systems, how performance is measured, and how career development changes when routine activities are automated.

“FAST has 180-plus agents across the business and is hiring more people than ever, which tells you the two work together,” Mahmood said in the company announcement. He added that organisations still need to determine what careers and effective performance look like when part of a team’s capacity is provided by software.

The company’s statement describes its AI agents as taking on work that had previously constrained growth, allowing employees to concentrate on other business priorities. FAST has not provided independently verified data on the resulting productivity gains or the number of employees it plans to recruit.

People leadership across a multi-company group

Mahmood’s remit will extend across FAST’s ecosystem, including Platformance, PULSR, PerformR, Radius, LION, MATTE MENA and Calibrate Commerce.

The businesses operate across performance marketing, affiliate commerce, creator technology, retail media, AI-enabled creative services and automation. FAST’s website describes the wider group as comprising eight subsidiaries across six global offices.

FAST founder and CEO Waseem Afzal said Mahmood’s experience building people functions within a high-growth technology company would support the group as it develops its workforce model.

According to Afzal, the company is seeking employees capable of working effectively with AI tools rather than treating automation primarily as a headcount-reduction exercise.

HR role expands as AI becomes part of workforce capacity

The appointment reflects an emerging challenge for people leaders: AI is increasingly being treated not only as workplace software, but as a form of operational capacity that must be incorporated into team structures and management systems.

That shift creates practical HR questions around role design, accountability, skills, performance standards and employee progression. It also requires organisations to determine who remains responsible when work is completed through a combination of human judgement and automated execution.

For FAST, Mahmood’s immediate task will be to connect its recruitment and growth plans with a clearer human–AI operating model across multiple companies.

The effectiveness of that model will depend on whether the group can define transparent accountability, maintain meaningful career pathways and demonstrate how its AI agents change jobs rather than simply adding another layer of technology to existing work.