Saudi Arabia, the largest economy in the Middle East, is a fast-growing business hub with opportunities across energy, construction, technology, manufacturing, and logistics. Driven by Vision 2030, the Kingdom is investing heavily in economic diversification and attracting international businesses.
Hiring in Saudi Arabia gives companies access to a skilled workforce with expertise in engineering, infrastructure, energy, and digital technologies. Its strategic location between Europe, Asia, and Africa also makes it an attractive base for regional operations.
While the market offers significant growth potential, employers must navigate local labour laws, Saudisation requirements, payroll obligations, and immigration processes. Partnering with an Employer of Record (EOR) simplifies compliance, payroll, and workforce management, enabling businesses to hire talent quickly and expand into Saudi Arabia with confidence.
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Employer of Record (EOR) refers to services provided by international employment firms that legally employ workers on behalf of a client company.
These firms hold the legal responsibility for labour compliance, which is crucial when your organisation operates in a country without a formal local entity. An EOR can assist with various tasks, including:
Expanding into Saudi Arabia can create a range of workforce and compliance challenges, particularly for businesses that do not yet have a local legal entity. The examples below highlight common obstacles organisations face when hiring, managing, and supporting employees in the Kingdom.
Ideal for companies without an in-country entity or local HR support in Saudi Arabia, our Employer of Record (EOR) services cover payroll management, including gross-to-net calculation, expat visa handling, and acccess to Airswift-provided employee benefits.
For companies with an entity in Saudi Arabia but no local HR support, we offer comprehensive solutions, including gross-to-net pay calculations, payroll reconciliations, expense and tax management, compliance reporting, tax equalisations, allowance handling, PTO tracking, employee query resolution, and HRIS management.
Our global immigration services offer complete support for employees in Saudi Arabia. This includes business visa assistance, advisory, work permit and authorisation, application handling, and sponsorship, ensuring seamless international employee mobility.
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Employment and compliance challenges are multiplied when your costs escalate from managing multiple suppliers or recruiting HR specialists.
There is a high cost associated with opening an entity in-country. It often makes more sense to leverage another company’s footprint to ease financial burdens.
Hiring an Employer of Record in Saudi Arabia enables you to work with a single entity while removing the need to maintain an expensive in-house team in Saudi Arabia.
An Employer of Record organisation can provide one contact for all inquiries.
This increases efficiency and ensures issues are dealt with quickly while reducing the need to engage multiple stakeholders, freeing up time to focus on your core business functions.
Airswift partnered with a leading mining and metals company to support the development of the Middle East’s first can sheet rolling mill in Saudi Arabia. As part of a $10.3 billion aluminium complex, the project required specialist engineering talent and comprehensive workforce support to ensure successful delivery.
To meet the project’s requirements, Airswift recruited 70 senior expatriate engineers through a combination of contract hire, direct hire, and executive search services. Alongside talent acquisition, Airswift provided Employer of Record, global immigration, relocation, mobilisation, payroll, tax management, and logistics support, enabling the compliant employment and deployment of international talent.
The success of the partnership resulted in Airswift being awarded prime vendor status, reinforcing its expertise in delivering compliant workforce and Employer of Record solutions for large-scale projects in Saudi Arabia.
Airswift partnered with an engineering company delivering projects for a major Saudi oil producer across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The client needed support hiring and managing workers in countries where it lacked local entities and knowledge of employment regulations.
Through its Employer of Record, payroll, mobility, relocation, and recruitment services, Airswift provided compliant workforce solutions across the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia. The team managed local employment requirements, payroll administration, and workforce mobilisation, helping the client establish and grow its presence in new markets.
Since 2017, Airswift has managed a workforce of 100 contractors, with 70 deployed at peak demand across multiple project locations. By simplifying hiring, payroll, and compliance, Airswift reduced administrative complexity and enabled the client to focus on project delivery. The success of the partnership led to Airswift being named the client's number one agency and securing a contract extension.
Few issues are as critical to project delivery as the identification, on-boarding and management of productive workforces. Our highly experienced team behind our talent acquisition services work directly with clients to identify their hiring needs.
Airswift understands that attracting and retaining high performing leadership teams is the key to success. These are critical hires who can influence a business to achieve financial, strategic, and commercial goals. Our executive search firm, Ducatus Partners, is led by a seasoned team of industry specialists focused on sourcing C-suite leaders.
From recruiting and mobilising entire multi discipline teams, to integrating a technology focused approach and supply-chain management, our support teams take on as much of our clients’ workforce organisation burden as possible.
Airswift has experience navigating the challenges of global expansion, managing international HR, tax and payroll challenges, finding niche and specialist talent, and restructuring and transforming organisations.
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