Recruitment Consultant

The short version

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

We're a team of five, growing to twenty — carefully. This seat is for a recruiter who wants to do the best work of their career, in the most fought-over talent market on the planet, and be paid properly for it: realistic earnings run from £30,000 starting out to £175,000+ for consistent billers — uncapped, and tax-free in Dubai.

The role

This is search, not CV-flicking. 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 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 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

• Agency recruitment experience — 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 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