Senior expertise on every search. That’s the point.

Penleigh International is a specialist retained search firm for midstream and subsea inspection. Engagements are led at partner level — no junior handover, no rotating account manager, no billable juniors learning on your role. A focused list of clients, a market we know deeply, and the senior attention every brief deserves.

01 The story

A specialist firm by design, not by accident.

Penleigh International was founded on a simple observation: generalist recruiters can’t reach the senior people who matter in midstream and subsea — because they don’t know who those people are.

Founder James Leigh spent his early career inside specialist energy recruitment, watching the same pattern play out: critical roles handed to agencies running broad searches, contingent-style, with shortlists pulled from public sources and the same handful of LinkedIn-active candidates. The roles either filled badly or didn’t fill at all.

Penleigh exists to do the opposite. Retained engagements only. One sector. Senior expertise leading every search. The network — now over 6,000 senior contacts across 21 countries — has been built role-by-role, conversation-by-conversation, over more than a decade in the same niche.

That depth is the entire product. It’s why hiring managers come back: most of our clients in the last four years are repeat customers. It’s also why we say no to roles outside our scope, even when the fee is on the table.

“If we don’t already know who the right ten people in the world are for your role — or know how to find them within a fortnight — you should hire someone else.”

02 Values

Four words we actually mean.

Most company values pages are an exercise in throat-clearing. Ours are short because they have to be — they’re tested on every search, with every client.

Service

We listen first, talk second. Your interests come ahead of ours, every time. We communicate clearly, honestly, and without filler — including when the message is one you didn’t want to hear.

ii.

Trust

We do what we say, when we say we’ll do it. Trust isn’t earned by mission statements; it’s earned by turning up, returning calls, and getting the small things right. Eight in ten of our clients hire us again. That’s the only metric for trust that counts.

iii.

Perseverance

We specialise in the searches no one else can crack. That requires energy, drive, and the patience to keep digging when the obvious candidates have all turned the role down. Some briefs are simply tougher than others. We dig deeper.

iv.

Delivery

We ask to be judged on results. 97% campaign success rate. 77% of placed candidates still in role four years on. Nothing else we say matters unless it shows up in numbers like these.

03 The way we work

A few things you should know up front.

Retained only

We don’t take contingent work. The economics push every recruiter in the wrong direction — toward speed over fit, volume over precision. If we’re not partnered with you on a search, we can’t do our best work. So we don’t pretend.

One sector, deeply

Midstream and subsea inspection. Pipeline services, pipeline construction, NDT, robotics-led inspection. We don’t take roles outside this scope, even when offered. The depth of network is the entire reason a client should pick us — diluting it would defeat the purpose.

Senior-led, on every search

No junior handover, no off-the-shelf longlists. The person you brief is the person who runs the search, calls the candidates, and presents the shortlist. That’s a deliberate constraint on how many clients we take at once.

HireInsight on every shortlist

Every candidate is presented through HireInsight: video introduction, psychometric profile, competency assessment, references, comp expectations. CVs are a poor way to evaluate senior people. We give you a better one as standard.

Honest about scope

If a brief sits outside what we genuinely do well, we’ll say so — and where we can, point you at a specialist who’ll serve you better than we would. The relationship matters more than any single fee.