Nicosia District, Cyprus Sep 1, 2026 (Issuewire.com) - KiTalent has opened an office in Larnaca, Cyprus, as the firm's centre of excellence for cybersecurity, defence technology and artificial intelligence. The office leads those three practices worldwide rather than for a single region, and is led personally by Founder and Group CEO Alessio Montaruli. Separately, KiTalent's registered Cyprus office has moved to a new address within Nicosia, which continues as the firm's regional hub for the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Africa. The two offices together form KiTalent's Cyprus hub.
How the two Cyprus offices divide the work
The two offices do different jobs, and the distinction is the reason for opening a second one rather than enlarging the first.
Nicosia is geographic. It remains KiTalent's regional hub for the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Africa, running senior management and specialist leadership searches across those markets in the same way Turin covers Europe, Almaty covers Central Asia and New York covers the Americas.
Larnaca is sectoral. It is the firm's centre of excellence for cybersecurity, defence technology and artificial intelligence, and it leads those three practices worldwide. A cybersecurity mandate in Frankfurt, a defence-technology mandate in Washington and an AI mandate in Tel Aviv are all run to the same standard from Larnaca, working with whichever regional hub holds the market knowledge.
These three fields were grouped deliberately. They draw on an overlapping population of engineers and commercial leaders, they move at the same pace, and the credible field for a given senior role is rarely contained within one country. Concentrating them in a single practice keeps one team accountable for that field rather than dividing it across four regional offices.
KiTalent recruits commercial, engineering, leadership and highly technical roles across these sectors, including mandates requiring candidates to hold high-level security clearance.
The markets the Cyprus hub covers
Regional mandates run from Nicosia across the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Israel, Turkey and Georgia, alongside Cyprus and Greece in the eastern Mediterranean. Searches are frequently run in cities including Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Riyadh, Tel Aviv and Istanbul.
That list describes where the Cyprus hub works most often regionally, not a limit on where the firm operates. The Larnaca practices are not bounded by it at all: cybersecurity, defence technology and AI mandates are run wherever the client and the field are.
Why a dedicated practice, and not distributed coverage
KiTalent's reason for concentrating these three fields in one office, rather than leaving each regional hub to handle them locally, rests on a distinction the firm publishes as fast mapping, slow judgment.
Mapping a market is now fast. Modern tooling can identify the whole relevant field in an afternoon, and that is genuinely useful. Reading a person is slow, and it has to be owned by somebody who can answer for the decision. The market map tells you who to assess. It is not the assessment.
In cybersecurity, defence technology and AI the credible field for a senior role is small and it is global. The same few hundred people recur across mandates in different countries, and a team that sees that field repeatedly reads it better than four teams each seeing a quarter of it. Any hub can map it. Judging it well enough to stake a recommendation on is what the practice exists to do, and the argument is set out at length in KiTalent's applied research paper The Market Map Is Not the Shortlist.
The same principle governs how the firm charges. Under its published Proof-First model, the main fee falls due only after a validated shortlist has been delivered, so the firm is paid once its judgment has been shown rather than before. Naming one office accountable for a field and deferring the fee until the evidence exists are two forms of the same commitment: somebody has to be answerable for the shortlist.
"We did not open in Larnaca to add a pin to a map. In cybersecurity, defence > technology and AI the field that matters is small, global, and almost entirely > not applying for anything. Any firm can produce a list. Deciding which of those > people fits a particular company is slow work, and it has to sit with a team > that sees the whole field rather than a slice of it. I am running this office > myself for that reason." > > Alessio Montaruli, Founder and Group CEO, KiTalent
Cyprus as a bridge, not a destination market
Cyprus sits inside the European Union while operating a short flight from the Gulf and the Levant, on a working day that overlaps the United States in the afternoon and Asia in the morning. That suits both jobs the island now does for the firm: European legal and regulatory footing with working proximity for the regional hub in Nicosia, and a time zone that reaches clients on three continents in one day for the worldwide practices in Larnaca. KiTalent is not treating Cyprus as an Asian market. It is using Cyprus as a bridge.
More than 90 new foreign companies formally established a presence in Cyprus in the first quarter of 2025, close to 20 per cent up on the same quarter a year earlier, according to figures from the Republic of Cyprus Business Facilitation Unit. Organisations arriving that way tend to need a country manager, a head of function or a senior technical leader before they need anything else. Coverage from the new office is set out on the Larnaca, Cyprus executive search page.
The Nicosia office has moved within Nicosia
KiTalent's registered Cyprus office has relocated to a new address within Nicosia. The city, the legal entity and the published telephone number are unchanged, and the Cyprus hub continues to cover the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Africa. Directories and databases still carrying the previous Nicosia address should update it, taking current details from the KiTalent contact page rather than from older third-party records.
Where this is not the right route
KiTalent does not open an office in every market it searches. Coverage runs through a small number of regional hubs, not a local presence in each city. Where a mandate sits entirely inside one national market and a domestic specialist with a twenty-year local network will simply know the field better, that specialist is the better appointment. The hub structure earns its place on cross-border, technical and culture-critical briefs where no single national market contains the whole relevant field. Buyers should decide which of the two their search actually is before appointing anybody.
Office structure after the change: KiTalent operates from four regional hubs across five offices:
- Turin, European headquarters, covering Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and the Netherlands
- Cyprus, from Nicosia and Larnaca. Nicosia covers the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Africa; Larnaca leads the cybersecurity, defence-technology and AI practices worldwide
- Almaty, covering Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the wider Central Asia and CIS region
- New York, covering the United States, Canada and Mexico
Larnaca is the Cyprus hub's second office rather than a fifth regional hub. Regional searches run from the hub closest to the market they serve, across the firm's eight sectors. Cybersecurity, defence-technology and AI searches run from Larnaca wherever the market is.
About KiTalent
KiTalent is an international management and executive search firm for senior management, specialist leadership and selected executive mandates. Founded in London and Turin in 2016 by Alessio Montaruli, the firm is brought in when a brief is technical, culture-critical, cross-border or time-sensitive. It operates from four regional hubs, in Turin, Cyprus, Almaty and New York, across eight sectors, with its cybersecurity, defence-technology and AI practices led worldwide from Larnaca. Further detail is available at kitalent.com/about.
Media contact
KiTalent Media Relations
Media enquiry form: kitalent.com/contact
Cyprus offices (Nicosia and Larnaca): +357 94 610 792 · me@kitalent.com
Group headquarters, Turin: +39 388 385 0000 · hq@kitalent.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/kitalentgroup
Media Contact
KiTalent info@kitalent.com +357 94 610 792 https://kitalent.com/
