Talent Management Lead

About Ektis

Ektis is a management consultancy firm with a Big4 heritage, providing transformation, advisory, and execution services across the Middle East banking sector. The company focuses on strategy, operations, digital, and people, aiming to build trust and create sustainable impact. Ektis has grown to over 150 employees within its first year, with a strong presence in KSA and plans for significant regional expansion by 2027. The firm is committed to investing in its people, shaping its HR, culture, and leadership foundations.

Role Overview: Talent Management Lead

Ektis is seeking a Talent Management Lead to oversee how the company assesses, develops, and advances its employees. This full-time role is based in Riyadh, Riyadh, and involves managing the existing performance framework while elevating its standards. The Talent Management Lead will work closely with the CEO, COO, senior leadership, project leaders, and mentors to ensure consistent assessment of performance and potential, early identification of issues, development of critical talent, and defensible talent decisions. The role also encompasses the firm's culture agenda, including recognition, engagement listening, and employee experience, integrating these aspects with performance judgment.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and manage the annual performance cycle, including goal setting, check-ins, reviews, calibration, and development planning.
• Ensure consistent application of goals, feedback, assessments, and ratings across all teams, grades, locations, and contract types.
• Coordinate calibration and moderation discussions with leadership, ensuring evidence-based and consistent decisions.
• Act as an advisor to senior leadership on performance, potential, progression, and talent decisions.
• Manage the firmwide recognition program and engagement listening cycle, including pulse surveys and listening sessions.
• Develop and evolve the approach to probation performance check-ins and early identification of performance concerns.
• Support leaders through structured performance improvement processes.
• Develop and embed a structured talent and succession review process, identifying critical roles and high-potential talent.
• Maintain and evolve career, grade, and progression frameworks.
• Own and strengthen performance-related elements of the Ektis mentoring model.
• Build reviewer capability through practical guidance and briefing sessions.
• Manage and develop the in-house Ektis performance management platform.
• Maintain regular leadership reporting on performance, potential, progression, succession, and talent themes.
• Ensure rigorous governance, data integrity, and quality assurance across performance and talent processes.

Qualifications and Experience

• 5-10 years of 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 ability to challenge them on performance evidence, consistency, or fairness.
• Experience in advancing a people framework through its next stage of maturity, improving governance, consistency, adoption, technology, and stakeholder capability.
• Excellent organizational and project management capabilities, managing multiple cycle deadlines and stakeholder groups.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex processes for employees and leaders.
• Comfortable in a growing organization where processes evolve and the role requires both judgment and hands-on execution.

Core Capabilities

Candidates should be prepared to provide specific examples of their direct involvement in:

• An end-to-end performance cycle and their specific contributions.
• Running or contributing to a calibration or moderation discussion, including managing disagreements with senior stakeholders.
• Practical experience with goal setting, project feedback, performance reviews, talent reviews, promotion/progression processes, and development planning.
• Supporting a performance concern or Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) and lessons learned.
• Transforming people and performance data into insights that influenced leadership decisions.
• Working with HR or performance technology to improve processes through digital tools.

Desired Attributes

• A perspective on performance management as a cultural and commercial instrument, demonstrated by shifting organizational dialogue around performance.
• Experience with, or a strong instinct for, fairness issues in a multi-national, multi-location, project-based workforce.
• Experience in succession planning, career frameworks, and internal mobility.
• Strong analytical capability and comfort in building insights rather than commissioning them.