Senior Consultant, Cestra Advisory (Dubai)
Cestra is hiring a Senior Consultant with two to three years' consulting experience. You will own workstreams on engagements and work directly with the firm's founders and expert advisors. Our clients include private-sector companies as well as public institutions in Europe and the GCC, and our work covers long-running engagements as well as shorter mandates.
About Cestra
Cestra Advisory is an advisory firm based in Dubai. We work with private-sector companies, governments, ministries, regulators, sovereign entities and investment promotion agencies in the GCC and beyond, on strategy, economic development and policy. Some engagements start with the strategy itself; others start once the strategy is set and the question is how to deliver it. We also build analytical tools for clients, so that the people deciding have the right figures in front of them when a decision is due.
What you will do
- Own workstreams on client engagements, from framing the question to the recommendation
- Build economic and financial models, including impact assessments and scenario analysis
- Turn the analysis into documents and presentations for senior audiences, and present them
- Work directly with client teams, including interviews and workshops
- Help design the analytical tools we build for clients
- Contribute to proposals, and supervise and coach interns
What you will learn
Because Cestra is a small firm, you will be responsible for substantial parts of each engagement early on, and you will work closely with the people who review your work. You will learn:
- How to lead a workstream. You will take a question from its first framing to the final recommendation, with the founders reviewing your work as it develops. You will learn how senior advisors structure a problem, test an analysis and prepare a client discussion, and you will receive detailed feedback throughout.
- How to work with clients. You will lead day-to-day contact with client teams, run interviews and workshops, and present to senior management. On long-running engagements you will build detailed knowledge of a client's business and of how it takes decisions.
- Analytical methods. You will extend your skills in economic and financial modelling, impact assessment, scenario analysis and operating-model design, and learn to design decision-support tools that clients use after an engagement ends.
- AI in delivery. We run research, economic modelling, regulatory screening and reporting on an AI-enabled platform. You will use it in your work, help design new workflows on it and learn to judge when its output can be relied on.
- How a firm is built. You will contribute to proposals, to our methods and to the tools we build, and you will coach interns. This gives you early experience of how an advisory firm develops its offering and wins new clients.
Who you will work with
Senior advisors work directly on every Cestra mandate. They are economists, policy specialists and strategy consultants with backgrounds at McKinsey, BCG and Roland Berger. We also work with expert advisors in specific fields, including specialists in statistics, machine learning, logistics and financial services. You will work with them on the analysis, and in client discussions where their expertise is needed.
What you bring
- Two to three years' experience in a consulting firm
- Excellent command of English and German
- A degree in management, economics, finance, engineering, public policy or another subject with strong quantitative content
- Strong Excel and PowerPoint skills, and clear writing in English
It helps if you have
- Experience with private-sector as well as public-sector clients
- Python, R or SQL
- Experience using AI tools in research and analysis, and checking what they produce
What we offer
- Your own workstreams from the start, with direct review and coaching from the founders and advisors
- A say in how the firm works, including our methods and the tools we build
Where and when
The role is remote. Normal hours are 09:00 to 18:00, five days a week, with extra hours when client work requires it.
How to apply
Apply through this LinkedIn posting with your CV. We review each CV against the role and invite shortlisted candidates to two interviews.
- If you need an adjustment to take part in the interviews, tell us when we contact you. We assess every candidate on the skills and experience the role needs.
