Entry-Level Client Relationship Associate

Namaa Partners is a strategy advisory firm working mostly with organizations in Saudi Arabia and with companies that have significant interests there. We were set up for problems that do not fit the large-firm model, and we take on a limited number of mandates at a time. The principals who scope the work are the ones who deliver it. About the role This is a permanent, full-time role for someone at the start of a career in advisory, working from our Riyadh office on a hybrid arrangement. You would support the principals across live mandates, which means sitting in the room where the work is scoped and seeing how a view gets formed and defended. You carry real pieces of each engagement from the first week: the research behind a market question, the model that tests a client's assumptions, the note that records what was agreed. We are looking for someone who wants to learn the trade by doing it rather than by watching it. What you will do • Build the evidence base for a mandate: market data, competitor positions, and the economics of a client's portfolio, pulled together into something a principal can read in ten minutes. • Draft and maintain working documents (issue notes, interview guides, board papers) and keep versions straight as a mandate moves forward. • Sit in on client interviews and workshops, take the notes that matter, and turn them into a short written summary the same day. • Prepare the numbers behind a recommendation, including simple models and sensitivity checks, and be able to explain where each figure came from. • Keep the engagement's own administration in order: action lists, follow-ups with client teams, and the record of what has been decided and by whom. What we need from you • A bachelor's degree, and a genuine interest in how organizations make decisions about strategy, capital and structure. • Clear writing in English. Arabic is a strong advantage for client interviews and for reading local material in the original. • Comfort with spreadsheets and slides, and the patience to check your own numbers before someone else does. • Enough structure to juggle two or three workstreams without losing one, and the habit of flagging a problem early rather than late. • Discretion. Much of what you will see and hear inside a client's organization does not travel. What success looks like In the first six to twelve months, you would become the person a principal trusts with the groundwork on a mandate: the research is done properly, the numbers hold up, and the note is written before it is asked for. A good first year means you have contributed to real client decisions, not prepared material that sat unused. It also means you can explain the logic of a piece of analysis to a client team without reaching for the slides. Clients should come to recognize your name as someone whose work they can rely on. How we work Principals scope every mandate and stay with it through delivery, so the person who defines the question is the person you will work with on the answer. Staffing is decided by the principal running the engagement, and sign-off sits with them too. You would be expected to form a view and say it, including when it disagrees with a draft on the table. Escalation is short: if something is unclear or going wrong, you raise it with the principal leading the work directly. As you build judgment, more of the client contact comes your way. What the role offers This is a permanent, full-time position based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on a hybrid arrangement. You would see mandates from the inside across corporate strategy, growth and market entry, operating model and efficiency, and organization and talent, working alongside principals rather than at a distance from them. The exposure is broad because the firm is deliberately narrow in what it takes on. You will learn how boards and committees reach decisions, and how a recommendation is tested once it meets management. Who tends to do well here The people who settle in quickly tend to be writers first and presenters second: they would rather get the argument right on the page than perform it in a room. They are comfortable working in a client's own vocabulary and asking the simple question everyone else has skipped. They like being accountable for a number and will chase down the reason it moved. Most of all, they are curious about why an institution behaves the way it does, and patient enough to find out.