Positions
Principal Executive Search
Antwerp, Brussels or Ghent · hybrid · Permanent contract, self-employed collaboration open for discussion.
14 September 2026
We are not hiring because a seat is empty. We hire when we meet the right person. That is why this position is permanently open.
Aligned Partners
Aligned Partners combines executive search, interim management and leadership advisory for organisations making strategic choices about leadership and organisation. We work exclusively in Belgium.
At Aligned Partners, you can enjoy working in an independent environment, without any international overhead.
We focus on four leadership domains:
- General Management
- Finance, Banking & Insurance Leadership
- People & Organisational Leadership
- Commercial Leadership
At C-level, at executive level, and with the managers reporting directly to the executive team.
The role
You take on one of the four domains in your region: Antwerp, Brussels or Ghent. That domain and that region are yours. You carry the assignments from beginning to end, from the first conversation with the client through to after the appointment, and you build the market there. We agree your commercial targets together, in advance. You reach them through your network. Not through campaigns, not through cold acquisition.
Within your domain you work from beginning to end:
- Networking. You build and maintain your network at executive and C-level. Your region is your own responsibility.
- Intake. You hold the conversation with the client yourself. You start from the context of the organisation, not from a job description.
- Sourcing. You explore the market actively and also approach the leaders who are not looking today.
- Closing. You guide the full selection process through to the decision.
- Aftercare. You stay involved after the appointment. The manager you place today is the director you will be looking for in five years.
No handoff. No anonymous processes. For your clients and your candidates, you are the single point of contact.
Who we are looking for
- At least five years of experience working with leadership profiles: in search or recruitment, or from consulting, audit, finance or HR with a strong grasp of how organisations work.
- A network in the making at executive and C-level, and the will to build on it every week.
- For Antwerp and Ghent: Dutch-speaking, fluent in French and English. For Brussels: bilingual Dutch and French, fluent in English.
- Team spirit. Perseverance. Persuasiveness. The work asks for all three, and rarely at the same moment.
- Empathy. You work with people making a career decision and with clients carrying a decision of their own. Those who do not sense what is at stake will not convince them.
- Someone who thrives on autonomy within a framework
- A genuine interest in leadership, in the depth of one domain and in the breadth of the profession.
We look further than the CV. What you have done counts. How you make choices counts more.
What we offer
The title of Principal. It stands for what you carry: your own clients, your own candidates, your own market. With us it is the step below Partner, and it is not given lightly.
- Your voice on approach and way of working counts. We are a firm in the making. Those who join now help shape what it becomes.
- The freedom to anchor your domain and your market locally, and to approach it your way.
- Hybrid working from the location that suits you. Today we work from Antwerp, Brussels and Ghent. If your market lies elsewhere, we arrange a flexible workspace there. We work where our people and their networks are.
- An environment where result-driven and people-driven are not opposites.
- A limited number of assignments at any one time. We work selectively, and that will not change.
- A permanent employment contract. A self-employed collaboration is open for discussion. We speak about the terms in full openness.
- A path to Partner. How your position develops, in role and in involvement in the firm, is a conversation we have in person.
A conversation
Do you recognise yourself in this? Fill in your contact details.
Your application is treated in full confidence. We understand better than most what such a conversation means for someone currently employed elsewhere.
