IT · Life sciences · Banking
Built on people,
driven by purpose
Hiring is not a volume problem. It is a judgment problem. SaMquest staffs IT, life sciences and banking teams the way a colleague makes a recommendation — personally, carefully, and with a reason attached.
Where we specialise
Three markets, deliberately
Information technology, life sciences, and banking and finance — and increasingly the overlap between them, where a hire has to understand both the domain and the regulated system it runs on. We do not pretend to cover everything else.
Life sciences
Biopharma, medical device, and the CROs and consultancies around them — clinical, scientific, and regulatory roles where a mis-hire costs a study timeline.
- Clinical research associates & site monitoring
- Biostatistics & statistical programming (SAS, CDISC)
- Clinical data management
- Pharmacovigilance & medical safety review
Banking and finance
Banks, asset managers, insurers and the fintechs pressing on them — the roles where a regulator, an auditor or a trading desk is downstream of the hire.
- Risk, credit and quantitative analysis
- Regulatory reporting and compliance
- Financial and FP&A analysis
- Core banking and payments engineering
Information technology
Engineering and data roles, including the validated and regulated environments most technology recruiters have never worked in.
- Software engineering — backend, frontend, full stack
- Data engineering & analytics platforms
- Cloud, DevOps, and platform engineering
- AI/ML engineering and applied data science
What we do
Four ways we fill a seat
Permanent, contract, confidential, or a fix to the hiring process itself. The engagement changes; the standard behind it does not.
Why a niche firm
A large agency sends you résumés.
We send you a recommendation.
Volume recruiting rewards throughput — the more profiles forwarded, the better the odds someone sticks. That math is why your inbox is full and your seat is still open. We run the opposite model: fewer searches, each one owned by the person you talk to.
- One point of contact. The person who takes your intake call is the person who runs the search and negotiates the offer.
- No résumé forwarding. Nothing reaches you that a recruiter has not already worked through.
- A written point of view. Every candidate arrives with an assessment, not just a CV.
- Honest counts. If the role is mispriced or the market is thin, we say so at intake rather than six weeks in.
- Guarantees in writing. Replacement terms agreed before the search starts, not after a hire falls through.
How a search runs
Five stages, start to start date
Nothing here is proprietary. It is just done properly, every time.
We learn the job behind the job description
An intake session with the hiring manager — what the role has to fix, and what would make an otherwise strong candidate wrong for this team.
We go find people, not postings
Job boards surface people already looking. We reach the ones who are not.
Every candidate is interviewed before you see them
Capability, motivation, compensation, notice period — confirmed by a recruiter before a name reaches you, so nothing collapses at offer stage.
You get a short list you can actually read
Three or four candidates, each with a written point of view. Not a stack of forwarded PDFs.
We stay in it through the offer and the start date
Negotiation, references, counter-offer risk — then check-ins through the first month.
For candidates
We don’t just find you a job.
We help you build a career.
When you work with us you are not another résumé in a pipeline. You get a real conversation about what you are good at, what you want next, and what a role is actually like before you take it — including the parts a job description leaves out.
- A person, not a portal. You speak with the recruiter who owns the search.
- Straight answers on compensation before you interview, not after.
- Interview prep that is specific to the team you are meeting.
- We tell you when it is not a fit — and why — instead of going quiet.
- Your details stay yours. Nothing is sent anywhere without your say-so.
Non-negotiable
What we hold ourselves to
These are terms of the engagement, not aspirations. Hold us to them.
Guarantees in writing
Fee, replacement terms, and timeline agreed before the search begins. No surprise invoices, ever.
No profile without consent
Candidates approve every submission of their details, and we check for existing relationships before we approach anyone.
No ghosting, either direction
Every candidate who interviews hears an outcome with a reason. We also never recruit out of a client we placed into.
In their words
What clients and candidates say
We hand SaMquest the roles that are hardest to fill — biostatisticians, statistical programmers, CRAs who can actually monitor a site — and we get back a short list, not a pile. Every candidate has been spoken to before we see them, and the notes that come with them are worth reading. That is not how staffing usually works.
No account managers
You will be dealing with one person
SaMquest is small on purpose. There is no switchboard, no junior handing you to a senior, and no queue. Call the number and you get the person who will run your search.
Next step
Tell us about the role you need to fill.
One conversation is enough for us to tell you whether we are the right firm for it — and what the search will realistically take.