Intern

Cestra is hiring a paid intern for three to six months. You will play a substantial part in our go-to-market work, which is how we build our client base, and you will also contribute to client engagements. Throughout the internship you will work directly with the firm's founders and with our expert advisors, and the internship can lead to a full-time offer.

About Cestra

Cestra Advisory is an advisory firm based in Dubai. We work with governments, ministries, regulators, sovereign entities and investment promotion agencies in the GCC and beyond on national development and economic policy. Some engagements start with the strategy itself; others start once the strategy is set and the question is how to deliver it. We also build analytical tools for clients, so that the people deciding have the right figures in front of them when a decision is due.

What you will do

You will spend most of your time on our go-to-market work. For each of our priority areas, we develop the specific questions that clients need answered, together with the analysis and the tools that answer them, and we take these to clients and partners. In this work you will:

• Research policy, regulatory and market developments, and help identify the questions they raise for governments, sovereign institutions and companies
• Prepare pitch documents, proposals and briefing materials for client meetings
• Build first versions of the analytical models and tools we show prospective clients
• Map target institutions, their mandates and the people who take the relevant decisions, and track opportunities, including public tenders
• Draft articles and other material that we publish under the firm's name

The founders set the priorities and review each piece of work with you, and you take on more responsibility as your experience grows.

On client engagements, you will:

• Collect and clean data, run analyses and build parts of economic and financial models
• Draft slides and report sections that go to clients
• Use AI tools for research and analysis, and check their output before it is used

What you will learn

Because Cestra is a small firm, you will see how the whole business works, from choosing the questions we take to clients to delivering the analysis once a client has engaged us. Over the internship you will learn:

• How advisory work is structured. Every mandate starts by defining the decision the client needs to make. You will learn to break that decision into questions that analysis can answer, to develop options and to set out a recommendation that a senior audience can act on.
• How a firm wins work. You will see how we choose topics, build a proposal and prepare a first client meeting. At larger firms this work is usually done by partners, and interns rarely take part in it.
• Economic and analytical methods. You will work with economic and scenario models and with impact and competitiveness assessments, and learn the checks an analysis must pass before it reaches a client.
• Analysis with AI. We run research, economic modelling, regulatory screening and reporting on an AI-enabled platform. You will learn to use it and to judge when its output can be relied on.
• Writing for decision-makers. You will write documents and presentations for boards, regulators and senior officials, in which each page states a clear point and the evidence for it.

Who you will work with

Senior advisors work directly on every Cestra mandate, and you will work alongside them rather than in a separate junior team. They are economists, policy specialists and strategy consultants with backgrounds at McKinsey, BCG and Roland Berger. We also work with expert advisors in specific fields, including finance, statistics, financial services, and logistics. You will prepare analysis and materials with them, and join their discussions with the team when your work concerns their field.

Who we are looking for

• A final-year student or recent graduate in management, economics, finance, engineering, public policy or another subject with strong quantitative content
• An interest in economic policy and in how institutions make decisions
• Confidence with numbers, Excel and PowerPoint; Python, R or SQL is an advantage
• Clear written and spoken English
• Availability to work full time for three to six months

What we offer

• A paid internship, with responsibility for defined pieces of work from the start
• Regular feedback and coaching from the founders and senior advisors
• Experience of both business development and client delivery
• A route to a full-time offer if the internship goes well

How to apply

Apply through this LinkedIn posting with your CV. We review each CV against the role and invite shortlisted candidates to one interview.

• If you need an adjustment to take part in the interview, tell us when we contact you. We assess every candidate on the skills and experience the role needs.