A Saudi registered company, in Jeddah

Saudi Arabia's Personal Data Protection Law is issued and enforced by the Saudi Data & AI Authority (SDAIA). It is a separate regime from the UAE's with its own regulator and its own implementing regulations - which is exactly why the two get separate pages on this site rather than one combined 'Middle East' page.

Like the UAE law, it places real conditions on transferring personal data outside the Kingdom, and consent has a more prominent role than in the GDPR. We document processing, keep data where you require it to be kept, and give you a clear answer on what crosses a border and on what basis.

Saudi VAT is 15%, the highest in the region, and it applies broadly - worth confirming your registration position before the first invoice. VAT registration in Saudi is handled through ZATCA, and a compliant invoice carries specific requirements, so it is worth getting your tax details to us early.

The riyal has been pegged to the US dollar at 3.75 since 1986, so an SAR contract carries no meaningful currency risk. We quote in SAR or USD depending on your procurement preference.

Much digital work in Saudi now sits against Vision 2030 and the programmes running under it, and the difference is usually delivery rather than technology. Government and enterprise buyers here want local understanding of procurement, Arabic-language capability where the audience needs it, and vendors who can evidence localisation and hosting.

That used to be the hard part for us, and we used to say so: that we were a UK supplier and you might need a local partner. It is no longer true. We hold a Saudi Commercial Registration and a registered office in Jeddah, so we contract as a Saudi entity when that is what a programme requires, and the paperwork your procurement team needs is ours rather than a partner's.

We will still be straight about the boundary. We are an engineering supplier: we build well, we document thoroughly, and we hand over properly. Where a programme needs Arabic-language end users, regulated-sector accreditation, or a relationship we do not have, we will say so and, where it helps, work alongside a local partner — but we will not claim a capability we cannot evidence.

Saudi Arabia's weekend is Friday and Saturday, which means it is largely in step with the UK's - so a client in Riyadh and a team in London have far more shared working time than the clocks suggest. A Saudi morning is a UK morning.

It does mean the effective overlap is tighter than a naive timezone calculation implies, because the shared weekend removes two days. We plan against that rather than discovering it in week three.