Careers · Executive search, not open contingency · Tokyo, remote first
Aspiring Partners is hiring Partners.
Aspiring Partners is an executive search firm, not a contingency agency. We find CEOs, Country Managers and Presidents in Japan for global technology companies and consulting firms.
In 2026 Murray will bill about ¥177M in fees, more than US$1 million, on his own and after several years out of the industry. That’s more than double his best year, and more work than one person can run. So we’re going bigger than planned. We need Partners who can take over clients under Murray and build practices of their own, and Associate Consultants to work under them on each search. Murray will help with the handover and coach where it helps.
You run the work on a platform we built ourselves, with a CTO who had already built AI recruitment software: a page builder, AI research workflows and outreach automation that take care of most of the research and admin.
- Remote first
- Partners
- Associate Consultants
- Executive search
- Technology consulting
Watch Murray’s intro12 minutes on his career, how he came to Japan and what we’re building
2003
Murray Clarke has been placing senior leaders in Japan since 2003.
US$1M+
Fees Murray will bill solo in 2026, about ¥177M, as of 1 November 2026.
12 of 15
Of our 2026 searches are for Country Managers, as of 1 November 2026.
4th
Aspiring Partners is the fourth search firm Murray has helped build. The first three were all acquired.
Why we’re hiring
Murray will bill more than US$1 million in fees on his own in 2026
Murray came back to the industry after several years away. He expects to bill around ¥177M (more than US$1 million) this year on his own, more than double his best year. Most of it is Country Manager and President searches for technology companies starting or growing in Japan. The year went better than he expected, so he’s building a bigger firm than he planned.
He can’t run all of it himself. He needs Partners to take over clients under him and build practices of their own, with Associate Consultants working under each Partner, while he keeps winning new work and building the platform.
At the start of October 2026, Murray planned to spend the rest of the year improving the platform. Within about a week, four new Country Manager searches came to him through referrals. These clients need someone senior to take over now. Associate Consultants join to support the Partners who run them.
We’re an executive search firm, not a contingency agency. Our senior people only do executive search. Hiring below that level we run for clients as RPO on our own platform, not as open contingency. The firm is based in Tokyo and works remote first.
01 · Enterprise technology
Country Manager, President and go-to-market leaders
For vendors in cloud and infrastructure, data and AI, cybersecurity and enterprise software.
02 · Technology consulting
Partner, Managing Director and Director
Searches inside consulting and technology services firms. Each population is mapped by firm, practice and grade before anyone is approached.
03 · RPO powered by AI
The team around the leader
Once the leader is in place, many clients need a team built around them. Instead of contingency, we run that hiring as RPO on our platform, with AI doing most of the sourcing, screening and admin.
Track record
A sample of Country Manager and go-to-market leadership placements for past and recent clients
- Workday†
- Splunk†*
- Celonis*
- Nutanix
- Recorded Future*
- Fastly*
- SUSE*
- Chainalysis*
- Zenity*
- Rapid7*
- Fivetran*
- mabl
- Databricks
- Pure Storage*
- GitHub*
- Zendesk*
- VMware
- Dell Technologies
- Glean*
- DoiT*
- SolidFire*Acquired by NetApp
- Lenovo†
- Fusion-io*Acquired by SanDisk
- McAfee†
- Akamai†
- Commvault*
- Veeam*
- SundaySky*
* Country Manager or go-to-market lead appointments made through executive search. † Clients where the team under Murray ran all Japan hiring as an RPO programme. Includes work at the firms Murray built before Aspiring Partners. References are available.
See the track recordI’ve worked with the team for many years now and they helped me hire the key leader to scale our Japan business, and the one to take us through the merger into Mastercard. Great work.
DQ Li, VP Asia Pacific, Recorded Future
Impressive research and a job well done. Happy to be a reference.
Josep Garcia, VP Asia-Pacific, SUSE and Rancher
The platform
Many recruiters work at firms with no AI strategy
Recruiters who use AI well are getting more done than those who don’t, and the gap is growing. Many good recruiters are at firms that haven’t worked out how to use it. Going independent doesn’t fix that, because then you have to build and run the technology yourself, on top of running searches.
At a firm with no AI strategy
You fall behind
Longlists are still built by hand, briefs are written from scratch and outreach is sent one message at a time. The firm’s tools haven’t changed in years.
Going independent
You become the IT department
You choose, pay for and connect the tools yourself, and learn to build the workflows. That’s time taken away from clients and candidates.
How we do it differently
We started with a CTO who had built AI recruitment software
Murray deliberately built Aspiring Partners with Konstantin Ivanov as CTO. Before joining, Konstantin co-founded Interviewy, an AI interviewing platform used for high-volume hiring by restaurant brands including Five Guys and Cinnabon. Together they built the platform our searches and RPO run on. It does most of the research, writing and admin, so more of your week goes on calls with candidates and clients. You use it from your first day, and we keep building it.
Below are two examples of where AI helps us. They aren’t the only ones. AI runs through most of our work.
Example 01
AI workflows
The research behind a search runs as workflows a consultant directs, not as manual list building.
- Create the job and research the client company from a brief
- Map every credible candidate by company, function and level, in Japanese and English
- Build the pipeline from LinkedIn and our own network, without duplicates
- Write candidate summaries and Executive Profiles, and check claims against the CV
Example 02
Automation
The repetitive work runs on its own and reports back. This is what makes RPO work at volume.
- Scheduled LinkedIn connection campaigns, screened against the mandate, with a report in the morning
- Weekly referral requests to client employees through Referable
- Email synced to each candidate and client record
- Alerts when target companies change leadership or start hiring
- Interview panels scheduled from the availability in email threads, across time zones
- Next, outreach run by AI that reads each candidate’s full record and follows our rules
The tech stack
How it fits together
TalentHub, built by our own team, sits in the middle, and everything connects to it as one platform:
- Google Workspace. Email, calendars and Drive are connected, so the AI works from the real conversations and diaries.
- AI models. We use them all, from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and others, and keep adjusting so the best model runs each task.
- Our own Mac app. A native macOS app we built to run a range of tasks.
- Data providers. The sourcing and contact enrichment providers that work, including RocketReach and ContactOut, are built into the candidate record, so you don’t sign up to each one.
- Third-party apps and tools when they’re the right fit for a job.
To give a sense of scale, Claude alone works with the platform through several hundred MCP connections, and Claude is only one of the AI models we use. Our own engineering team builds and runs every connection, so consultants don’t have to set anything up.
A real example, October 2026
Murray had three candidates to put in front of a panel of three client interviewers, spread across Australia, Singapore and Japan. He told the AI to arrange it. It read the email threads to find when everyone was free, then booked each interview straight into the calendars and sent the invites, with the client set up as co-host so they received the transcripts. Everyone accepted and there wasn’t a single hiccup. The client and a candidate both told him they were impressed, and the client found the transcripts useful for their own coaching.
Mac and GoogleOnlyWe work on Mac and Google Workspace. If you can’t work without Windows, we’re probably not for you. Each team member gets a company Mac, as powerful as the AI work needs, and we upgrade as the AI changes. It’s a company asset with security on it, so keep personal things on your own computer, not ours.
AI modelsThe best one for each taskEach model is good at different things. We test models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Grok, Google and others, use the best one for each task, and keep checking as new ones come out.Ask AI · Built into the platform
Ask AI when a partner isn’t free
Our partners help consultants as much as they can, but they aren’t always available. Ask AI is a window in the platform where anyone can get help at any time. It draws on what has worked for others, including founding partner Murray Clarke.
Everything is in one system, so Ask AI works from the full picture of each search, not just the screen in front of you.
What it works from
- Calendars
- Call transcripts
- Files
- Notes
- Interview prep agent output
- External research agents
- Candidate and client records
The kind of thing you can ask
Prepare me for tomorrow’s call with this candidate.How did Murray approach a similar Country Manager search?Draft a follow-up from today’s call transcript.Market brief
Why Japan? Why Now?A client brief on Japan’s technology and hiring markets, built from Japanese-language sources with every figure linked.Open the brief →Research
Japan Head Appointments RegisterEvery new head of Japan at a global technology company since 2024, with a source for each appointment.Open the register →A partner still does the work that matters. The platform does the research and admin under a consultant’s direction. You run the calls, assess the candidates, advise the client and close the offer.
Who you’d work with
Founding Partner, Murray Clarke
Murray Clarke
Founding Partner, CEO · I’ve placed senior leaders in Japan since 2003
Four search firms, three acquired
Now
Aspiring PartnersWholly owned, not a joint venture. AI-native from the start. The name comes from Mount Aspiring and the logo from Treble Cone, two places that were a big part of my life growing up in New Zealand.Previously
Experis ExecutiveI founded it as a joint venture with ManpowerGroup (NYSE: MAN) and built an RPO business that was around half the firm. Acquired.Previously
RGF ExecutiveI led the technology, digital media and gaming team, then the consumer team too. Almost half of company revenue by the time I left. “Best Leader” twice, top-5 biller. Acquired.Previously
Boyd & MooreI was a founding member and senior leader. Acquired.
- VMware JapanI worked in-house and was VMware’s top agency recruiter. That experience led to the RPO business I built at Experis.
- University of TokyoAIKOM Program.
University of OtagoBachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Arts.
- More than 70 leadership appointments across my career, including Country Managers and go-to-market leaders
- Between firms, I built the software Aspiring Partners runs on
- Now I’m focused on winning new searches and building the platform for my team
Video · 12 minutes
Murray introduces himself
My career, how I came to Japan, and what we’re building at Aspiring Partners.
First take, no rehearsal. What you see is what you get.
What I undersold in the video
~¥177M
My 2026 fees, billed solo, expected by the end of the year.
- Closed and signed ¥109MPlacements made, signed offers and retainers.
- Still to come ¥37.5MThree more searches due to close in 2026.
- Starting now ¥30MTwo startup searches.
The 15 searches in 2026
87%
Came by referral13 of 15. The other 2 came from our own business development.
67%
Succession10 of 15 are to replace a leader at an established company. The other 5 are for startups.
80%
Country Manager12 of 15 are Country Manager searches. The other 3 are for other senior leaders.
As of 1 November 2026. Gross fees. Some of this business came through two referral partners, including a regional agency, and each was paid a share of the fee. More than double my best year, after several years out of the industry. Figures are rounded. The 15 searches: 12 are closed, signed or accepted, and 3 are under way. Percentages are by number of searches.
Slides · 26 pages · PDF
Recruiting in Japan after open contingency
The talk I give to recruiters: how to become a client’s go-to recruiter, how to pick clients by growth stage, and where my 2026 business came from.
The two tools in the slides
