Partner / Director - Eire - Healthcare & Education

Do you have the experience and the motivation to build an Irish practice in Healthcare, Social Care and Education?

Do you want the backing of an award-winning group and the PE-invested client base to match?

Are you Interested in supporting global expansion of an executive search firm where your ambition sets the pace?

About Us

Compass Carter Osborne is the industry's highest-profile provider of board-level executive search within independent health and care services. Part of Compass Recruitment Solutions (CRS), a market-leading recruitment business focused on the Health, Care, Education, and Life Sciences sectors.

We are a founder-led and investor-backed company with a values-driven culture where ambition, collaboration, and a sense of fun are at the heart of everything we do. Our teams are encouraged to thrive, achieve their full potential, and enjoy the journey along the way.

As an award-winning Executive Search provider (Recruitment Firm of the Year, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024; Search Firm of the Year, HealthInvestor Awards 2022, 2024, 2026), we are the go-to partner for critical C-suite and senior-level hiring. Our clients include leading care providers, private equity investors (and their portfolio companies), and high-net-worth individuals who trust us to find the very best talent for their businesses.

The Opportunity

We are looking for a Partner or Director-level operator who has built something, a practice, a book, a reputation, in retained C-suite search across the commercial not-for-profit space. Whether you are already running a practise at a boutique or global search firm, or you are a Director or Senior Consultant ready to take the step into leading and developing your own practice, we would like to hear from you.

For those making the step up, this is a genuine opportunity to build a practice inside a firm that will back you with platform, brand and infrastructure, not one that will slot you into someone else's model. For Senior / Principal consultants, this will give you a defined pathway to Partner through the Director progression path.

Our Ireland practice will complement our existing operations across the UK and build on work in the country that already includes some of the most substantive appointments in Ireland over recent years across existing sectors (Healthcare, Social Care and Education).

Our work spans investor-backed healthcare, primary and secondary care, adult social care, senior living, consumer health, and wellness. In Education, we work with K12 independent schools, private school groups, specialist SEND providers, and PE-backed education platforms. In Not for Profit, we focus on commercially minded organisations outside the traditional charity space: trading subsidiaries, membership bodies with commercial arms, and PE-backed social impact platforms.

Across all of our sectors, we place CEOs, CFOs, COOs and board-level leadership into businesses backed by private equity, family offices, and institutional investors who hold their leadership teams to a commercial standard.

Key Responsibilities

Reporting to the founding Partners, Adam Carter and Luke Osborne, you will own:

• Personal fee production on retained C-suite mandates (CEO, CFO, COO, Chair and NED-level) and Leadership mandates (Operations, Commercial, Quality) appointments across the Éire region
• End-to-end mandate delivery - from client briefing and search strategy through to shortlist, offer and placement
• Client relationship ownership - building deep, long-term partnerships with a portfolio of clients in Ireland, and being the point of contact they trust for their most senior hires
• Practice ownership, building the Éire region, its client base, its brand and its market position
• Team build-out, hiring, mentoring and leading the consultants and researchers who will scale the practice with you
• Client strategy, long-term partnerships with PE-backed and privately-owned organisations in the Healthcare, Life Sciences, Education and Not-for-Profit sector in Ireland
• Commercial contribution to CCO; you will be part of the firm's leadership conversation on brand, growth and platform investment, not sat outside it

About You

• A proven track record of retained C-suite search at Partner, Director or senior fee-earner level within a specialist or global search firm
• A demonstrable portable client base and network across the Éire region, including organisations, boards, chairs and CEOs who know you
• Sustained personal billings and evidence of building or materially growing a practice, not simply inheriting one
• Comfort operating at CEO, Chair and Trustee level, briefing, challenging, and being taken seriously in the room
• Genuine credibility across Ireland with strongly transferable relationships and insight
• A view on the Éire market, which parts of it are moving, where PE and institutional capital is finding a home, where the leadership challenge is sharpest
• The entrepreneurial temperament to build inside a young firm; you want the platform of a group, but not the friction of a large plc

What we offer

• Competitive salary & commission structure
• Private Medical Insurance, Life and Critical Illness Insurance
• Electric Car Salary Sacrifice
• Gold Standard Investors in People, with clear career progression, wellness support, and personal development opportunities
• Quarterly company events & a vibrant social calendar
• Increasing annual leave allowance
• Early finish every Friday and flexible working with either a central London or remote Ireland base
• Fluency in English is required, with fluent Irish language skills preferred.

Why Join Compass Carter Osborne?

At Compass Carter Osborne, you'll be part of a truly market-leading team at an exciting stage of growth. You'll work alongside experienced consultants who are passionate about their sectors, in a business that has built a reputation for excellence.

As a Partner, you will have the mandate to build a practice, backed by a firm still early enough in its own story that you can shape it as you go. Genuine autonomy over how the vertical grows, who joins it and how it goes to market. Founder-level partnership with three founding Partners who have built CCO from the ground up. And a genuine equity conversation for the right person.

The practice is yours to build. The platform is already here.

Compass Carter Osborne is part of Compass Recruitment Solutions, Great Place to Work certified, Investors in People (Gold), ISO 9001 and Cyber Essentials accredited.

London

Compass Carter Osborne (Part of Compass Recruitment Solutions)