About UsEktis is a boutique management consultancy born fromBig4heritage. We bring start-up agility with world-class standards, delivering transformation, advisory, and execution excellence across the Middle East banking sector. Our work spans strategy, operations, digital, and people – always grounded in building trust and creating sustainable impact.
Since launching, we have grown to 150+ employeeswithin the year, with a strong footprint in KSA and a growing presence across the region.As we continue this trajectory, our ambition is to scale significantly by 2027, expanding both our capability and regional reach.
As we scale, we are investing in our most important asset: our people. The foundations we set today in HR, culture, and leadership will define the experience of tomorrow. Joining Ektis means being part of an ambitious, entrepreneurial environment where you will help shape not only our business, but also the careers and lives of those who join us.
Role PurposeThe Talent Management Lead owns how Ektis judges, develops and progresses its people.
Ektis already has a defined performance approach and an annual cycle in place, so this role does not start from a blank page. The cycle runs to fixed dates and must land. But operating it is the floor, not the ambition. In a consulting firm, the performance framework is the culture made operational. Whether feedback is honest, whether ratings are trusted, whether underperformance is addressed or quietly tolerated, whether people believe progression is earned rather than allocated. Those things are decided in the design and conduct of this cycle, and they compound as we grow.
We are therefore looking for someone who will run the machinery credibly and then raise the standard of what happens inside it. The role works closely with the CEO, COO, senior leadership, project leaders and mentors to ensure performance and potential are assessed consistently, that emerging issues surface early, that critical talent is understood and developed, and that talent decisions are evidenced and defensible.
The role also carries our culture agenda, including recognition, engagement listening and employee experience. We have placed these here deliberately rather than in a separate function, because recognition and how people experience this firm are inseparable from how their contribution is judged.
This is a hands-on ownership and evolution role. The successful individual will inherit a working foundation, operate it effectively, and continue to strengthen, simplify and scale it as Ektis grows.
Key Responsibilities
Performance Cycle Ownership
- Own and manage the full annual performance cycle, including goal setting, ongoing check-ins, mid-year and year-end reviews, calibration and development planning
- Maintain and strengthen the performance calendar, governance, communications, guidance and decision points required to keep each stage on track
- Ensure goals, feedback, assessments and ratings are applied consistently across teams, grades, locations and contract types
- Review each cycle and improve the framework, process and employee experience based on business need, feedback, data and lessons learned
Consulting Calibration and Judgement
- Apply a strong understanding of performance management in a project-based consulting environment, including multiple reviewer inputs, project feedback, grade expectations, utilisation, promotion readiness and cohort calibration
- Coordinate calibration and moderation discussions with leadership, ensuring decisions are evidence-based, consistently applied and appropriately documented
- Monitor individual and cohort performance trajectories, identifying inconsistencies, emerging risks and areas where additional evidence or challenge is required
- Act as a trusted adviser to senior leadership on performance, potential, progression and talent decisions, providing constructive challenge where fairness or consistency is at risk
Culture, Recognition and Trust
- Treat the performance framework as a primary instrument of culture, not an administrative cycle, and be accountable for how it is experienced as well as how it is executed
- Raise the quality and honesty of performance conversations across the firm, so that feedback is specific, timely and useful rather than deferred to year end
- Protect fairness and consistency across cohorts, grades, locations, nationalities and contract types, and surface patterns that suggest bias or inconsistent standards
- Ensure progression criteria are transparent and understood, so that people know what is expected of them and what is required to advance
- Address the tolerance of underperformance directly, working with leaders to close the gap between what is said in calibration and what is said to the individual
- Own the firmwide recognition programme and platform, including the points budget and the link between recognition, performance and our values, so that what we celebrate matches what we say we value
- Own the engagement listening cycle, including firmwide pulse surveys, grade and segment analysis and listening sessions, and be accountable for closing the loop by showing people what changed as a result
- Own the Experience Ambassador network and the wider employee experience agenda, working with Marketing on internal communications where required
- Read engagement and listening data alongside performance data, and bring leadership an honest view of where the stated culture and the lived one diverge
Early Intervention and Performance Improvement
- Own and evolve the approach to probation performance check-ins and early identification of performance concerns
- Support leaders through structured performance improvement processes, including PIPs, clear objectives, progress tracking, review points and formal sign-off
- Identify early warning signals and agree timely interventions with leaders before issues become formal concerns
- Partner with HR where formal employee relations support or process oversight is required
Talent, Succession and Career Progression
- Develop and embed a structured talent and succession review process, identifying critical roles, high-potential talent, succession risk and internal mobility opportunities
- Maintain and evolve career, grade and progression frameworks so expectations at each level are clear
- Ensure alignment between performance expectations, competencies, promotion decisions and career progression
- Own the performance and talent elements of promotion processes, including readiness assessment, talent discussions and associated governance
- Use performance and talent insight to inform workforce, capability and development planning with the relevant business and People leads
Mentoring and Reviewer Capability
- Own and strengthen the performance-related elements of the Ektis mentoring model, including allocation principles, role clarity, guidance and effectiveness
- Ensure mentors, managers and reviewers understand their role in goal setting, feedback, reviews and development
- Build reviewer capability through practical guidance, briefing sessions and tools that improve the quality of goals, feedback and written evaluations
- Use performance and talent data to identify recurring capability needs and direct development activity, in partnership with the L&D Lead, to where it will have most impact
Performance Technology and Process
- Own the day-to-day management and ongoing development of the new in-house Ektis performance management platform
- Ensure workflows, employee data, cycle configuration and reporting remain accurate, practical and effective
- Work with internal stakeholders and technology providers to improve functionality and introduce future performance and talent modules
- Drive adoption so employees, mentors and managers can use the platform confidently
Talent Data, Insight and Governance
- Maintain a regular leadership reporting cadence covering performance, potential, progression, succession, performance risk and key talent themes
- Connect performance, utilisation, progression, retention and engagement data to identify patterns, risks and capability gaps, and translate these into clear recommendations
- Produce meaningful insight rather than process-completion reporting
- Maintain rigorous governance, data integrity and quality assurance across performance and talent processes
- Partner with HR, Reward and leadership so performance outcomes are accurately reflected in progression, promotion and reward decisions
Key Stakeholders
- CEO, COO and senior leadership
- Partners, Principals and Directors
- Project leaders and performance reviewers
- Mentors
- Internal Operations Team, including HR, Finance, L&D and Marketing
Experience And SkillsEssential background
- Demonstrable experience within management consulting, a strategy house, Big 4 advisory or a comparable project-based professional services environment
- Credibility with senior consulting leaders, and the confidence to challenge them where performance evidence, consistency or fairness is at risk
- Experience taking a people framework through its next stage of maturity, improving governance, consistency, adoption, technology and stakeholder capability
- Excellent organisation and project management capability, with the ability to hold multiple cycle deadlines and stakeholder groups at once
- Strong written and verbal communication, with the ability to simplify complex processes for both employees and leaders
- Comfortable in a growing organisation where processes exist but continue to evolve, and where the role requires judgement and hands-on execution in equal measure
Core capability you will be asked to evidence
We will ask you to talk us through this in detail, so please come prepared with specifics rather than general familiarity.
- Direct involvement in an end-to-end performance cycle, and what you owned within it
- A calibration or moderation discussion you have run or contributed to, including how you handled a rating you disagreed with and how you held the line with a senior stakeholder
- Practical experience of goal setting, project feedback, performance reviews, talent reviews, promotion or progression processes and development planning
- A performance concern or PIP you have supported, and what you would do differently
- How you have turned people and performance data into insight that changed a leadership decision
- Experience working with HR or performance technology and improving process through digital tools
What will set you apart
- A view on performance management as a cultural and commercial instrument rather than an HR process, and evidence of having shifted how an organisation talks about performance
- Experience of, or genuine instinct for, the fairness questions that arise in a multi-national, multi-location, project-based workforce
- Experience of succession planning, career frameworks and internal mobility
- Strong analytical capability and comfort building insight rather than commissioning it
What Success Looks Like
- The performance framework is owned confidently, runs smoothly to time, and continues to mature as the organisation grows
- Employees understand what is expected of them, how performance is assessed and what is required to progress
- Managers, mentors and reviewers are confident in their role, and the quality of performance conversations and written feedback measurably improves
- Ratings and progression decisions are evidenced and applied consistently across cohorts, and people believe they are
- Underperformance and emerging risk are identified and addressed earlier, and what is said in calibration matches what is said to the individual
- Leadership has clear visibility of performance, potential, succession, capability gaps and talent risk
- Internal talent pipelines strengthen and critical roles have clearer succession options
- Development investment is directed by evidence of the capabilities the business actually needs
- Recognition is used consistently and is visibly connected to the behaviours and contribution we say we value
- Engagement is measured honestly, participation in listening improves because people believe it leads somewhere, and leadership hears what is actually happening rather than what is comfortable
- Performance and talent processes remain practical, well adopted, trusted and scalable as Ektis grows
Role FocusPerformance → Potential → Progression → Succession → Development → Insight, with trust and fairness running through all of it
