Recruitment Consultant

The short version

We're Cortex Search — a Dubai-headquartered executive search firm specialising in Technology, AI and Cybersecurity leadership. We headhunt the off-market 1%: the people who never appear on job boards because they're too busy building the future.

A team of five, growing to twenty — carefully. This seat is for a recruitment consultant who wants to do the best work of their career and be paid properly for it: £30,000 to £175,000 OTE, uncapped, tax-free.

The role

This is search, not CV-flicking. As a recruitment consultant at Cortex, you'll run assignments end to end for founders, CTOs and CISOs across the UK and GCC — mapping markets, headhunting people who aren't looking, qualifying them properly, and managing offers that regularly involve six-figure packages and international relocation.

The Gulf is pouring billions into AI and national cyber defence, and the constraint isn't money — it's talent. Your job is to find it, engage it, and move it. Discreetly, professionally, and repeatedly.

What you'll actually do

Run retained and contingent searches across technology, AI, machine learning, data and cybersecurity roles — mid-level through to executive

Map global talent markets and build target lists of people worth pursuing, not just people who applied

Headhunt: approach, engage and win over candidates who are happy where they are

Qualify hard — technical credibility, motivation, package, relocation appetite — before anyone reaches a client

Manage full processes: interviews, feedback, offer negotiation, resignation coaching, and keeping placements alive through notice periods

Build your own client relationships over time — the recruitment consultants who grow accounts here grow fastest

Work directly with both founders, who still run desks and will train you on the tools, the pitch, and the market

What you'll need

Experience as a recruitment consultant in an agency — ideally tech, but any market where you've genuinely headhunted rather than posted-and-prayed

Resilience and structure: search is slower-burn than volume recruitment, with far bigger paydays

Curiosity about AI and cybersecurity — you don't need to code, but you need to hold a credible conversation with a CTO and want to get better at it

Strong written and spoken English; other languages useful across the region

Self-sufficiency — full founder backing, zero hand-holding

Exceptional but less-experienced? If you're hungry and coachable, apply anyway — our training took someone from zero experience to their first placement in month three

Relocate to Dubai

What you get

£30,000–£175,000: competitive base + uncapped, tax-free commission. Where you land in that range is decided by your billing, not your tenure. Commission-only with bigger splits available for experienced billers who back themselves

Fees that reflect the market: senior AI and cyber placements, not volume margins

Training and mentorship directly from the founders

Hybrid working: 2 days from home, 3 days across our Dubai locations

Digital Nomad Status once you're consistently on target: unlimited holiday, work from anywhere in the world

A seat at the table while the business is still being built — and clear progression from recruitment consultant to running your own desk, then your own team

A team of five who like each other, on the way to being twenty who do too

Who we are

We're not a CV pump. Cortex Search runs partner-led, intelligence-driven search for the hardest hires in technology. We're new and proud of it — no politics, no hiding places, and a deliberate plan to only hire people we genuinely want to build a business with.

If you want anonymity in a big machine, this isn't it. If you want to master search in the fastest-moving market on earth, we should talk.

Apply now, or reach out for a confidential conversation.