Dr. Ahmed Jamil Kattan has been a deputy minister for contractor classification at the Ministry of Municipal, Rural Affairs and Housing since 2019.

Kattan received a bachelor’s degree in computer sciences from the Jordan University of Science and Technology in 2005.

Two years later, he successfully completed an M.S. program in software engineering from the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at the University of Essex, UK, where he also obtained a Ph.D. degree in artificial intelligence in 2010.

In 2010, he worked as a research associate of game theory and evolutionary computation in the computer science department at Loughborough University in the UK. He also taught computer courses in the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at the University of Essex in 2007.

In about 2011, he returned to Saudi Arabia to join Umm Al-Qura University, where he worked as an assistant professor and later as head of its department of computer sciences until 2015. He was also a visiting research professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 2014 and 2015.

Kattan has served as a senior adviser to the minister of the-then Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs and to the minister of commerce and investment.

He has also been a board member of the Saudi Post. From 2015 to 2018, he was the deputy minister for labor policies at the Ministry of Labor and Social Development, and a board member of the General Authority of Small and Medium Enterprises (Monshaat). During this period, he oversaw many national projects aiming enhancing the Saudi labor market.

Kattan has also worked as an adviser in several organizations, including the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development and its Hajj and Umrah counterpart, as well as the University of Prince Mugrin and the Makkah municipality.