Associate Director - Solutions (MSP, RPO, Embedded) in Leeds

Akkar is one of the fastest-growing specialist recruitment businesses in the UK, operating across defence, aerospace, space, autonomy, robotics and automotive sectors globally. We’re building a dedicated Solutions division to move our client relationships beyond contingent and retained search into long-term, outcome-based partnerships.

This is a founding commercial hire. You will own the end-to-end business development cycle for RPO, Embedded Talent, MSP and bespoke workforce solutions - from identifying the opportunity, through solution design, to signed commercial agreement.

There is no existing book to inherit. There are no case studies to lean on. You are building this from scratch alongside the CEO, which means you need to sell a vision, not a brochure. If that excites you, read on. If it scares you, this isn’t the role.

What You’ll Do:

• Hunt and qualify enterprise opportunities: Build your own target account list across Akkar’s core sectors. Identify companies where the hiring model is broken — high agency spend, slow time-to-fill, poor retention - and position Akkar’s solutions as the commercial answer.
• Sell outcomes, not headcount: Move prospects from a transactional mindset (“I need five engineers”) to strategic partnership thinking (“I need a hiring engine that keeps pace with my growth plan”). You sell on time-to-productivity, cost-per-quality-hire, and employer brand impact - not fees.
• Design the solution before you price it: Lead discovery and scoping sessions that diagnose the client’s current hiring funnel leakage, assess their internal TA capability, and architect a model that fits. The details determine the solution — you should never price before you’ve understood the problem.
• Navigate complex stakeholder maps: Enterprise deals involve HR, Procurement, Finance and business-line leaders - often with competing agendas. You understand how to identify decision-makers, influencers and potential blockers, and you know how to position the solution so internal TA teams see it as an addition, not a threat.
• Run a disciplined pipeline: Apply structured qualification frameworks (MEDDIC or equivalent) to every opportunity. Know when to invest time and when to walk away. Enterprise sales cycles run 6–18 months; you cannot afford hope in your pipeline.
• Own proposals and commercial negotiation: Lead RFP/RFI responses, build pricing models (per-hire, management fee, gain-share, hybrid) and negotiate MSAs. You are comfortable with commercial detail and contract language.
• Build the function internally: Work with the CEO to define what Akkar needs to deliver on the solutions you sell — delivery team structure, technology stack, implementation playbooks, SLAs. You are part seller, part internal consultant.
• Feed intelligence back into the business: Track competitor activity, market pricing trends and buyer behaviour. Report with transparency through Salesforce.
• Working closely with the Vice President and Solutions team: Drive revenue growth by identifying up-selling opportunities across the current client portfolio. Deliver tailored solutions that align with client needs, and fostering long-term partnerships to maximise account value.

What You Bring:

• This role requires someone who has lived in the enterprise solutions space — not just recruitment. The language, the sales cycles, the commercial structures and the stakeholder complexity are fundamentally different from contingent billing.
• Enterprise solutions sales pedigree: Minimum 3 years selling RPO, Embedded, MSP or workforce solutions into engineering, technology or industrial sectors. You understand multi-stakeholder sales cycles with annual contract values of £250k+.
• Consultative selling instinct: You diagnose before you prescribe. When a prospect asks you to whiteboard a solution for a 100-hire-per-year company, your first instinct is to ask questions — where in the funnel are they leaking? Are technical roles filling at the same rate as functional ones? What’s the financial impact of being behind the hiring plan? If your instinct is to start with fees, you are not right for this role.
• MEDDIC (or equivalent) fluency: You can articulate the Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identified Pain and Champion for every live opportunity in your pipeline. You use this to qualify ruthlessly, not to write it on a CRM and forget it.
• Credibility without collateral: You’ve sold into situations where the company or product was new and case studies didn’t exist yet. You bridged the gap with personal track record, proof-of-concept proposals and sheer conviction. This is a real situation at Akkar — you need to be strong here.
• Commercial and financial acumen: You build business cases, margin models and ROI analyses. You understand gain-share, cost-per-hire, management fee hybrids and can model them for both sides of the table.
• Tech-stack literacy: You can discuss ATS/CRM integration, candidate workflow automation and reporting infrastructure with credibility. You don’t need to be an engineer, but you need to hold a technical conversation with a client’s TA Ops team.
• Builder mentality: You are not waiting for leads, marketing decks or a delivery team to be handed to you. You build your own account list, identify the gaps in Akkar’s delivery capability and tell the CEO what you need. If the first thing you ask for is “leads,” this is not for you.

Why Akkar?

• Founding solutions hire with direct CEO access and genuine strategic influence on a new revenue line.
• Global platform across UK/EU, Middle East and North America with 100+ active clients in defence, aerospace, autonomy, robotics and automotive.
• Ambitious scale plan targeting £45M+ revenue by FY2030 — solutions is a central growth pillar.
• High-performance, low-politics culture with real autonomy and accountability.
• Competitive base + uncapped commission aligned to solution contract values.