Salary Survey 2026

It has been a pleasure working with Brightwater Executive on a number of senior executive level appointments over recent years. Yvonne and her colleagues took the time to understand Focus Ireland, our culture and values, and the leadership qualities we were seeking. Their advice, judgement and attention to detail gave us confidence throughout the process, and the quality of candidates presented was consistently strong. We greatly value the partnership we have developed with Brightwater Executive and would happily recommend them to organisations seeking executive search and senior recruitment support.

It was a pleasure working with Brightwater Executive on a key senior recruitment assignment. Their understanding of our brief, responsiveness, and the quality of candidates provided made the process seamless and successful. I would be happy to work with them again

The experience partnering with Brightwater Executive was extremely positive, with a flexible and supportive approach throughout. Communication was strong and consistent, and there was a clear commitment to understanding our needs and identifying the best approach for HPRA. Yvonne and the team were brilliant to work with and invested a great deal of time and effort to ensure successful outcomes overall, which we very much appreciated.

The team at Brightwater demonstrated a strong understanding of the brief, communicated clearly throughout, and were highly responsive to feedback on the field search and shortlist. The calibre of candidates was excellent, and the successful appointment reflects the strength of the process. I would be very happy to recommend Brightwater Executive.

Our organization partnered with Yvonne McNulty at Brightwater Executive to embark on filling a vacant leadership position. I was extremely impressed by their thoughtful and thorough approach to helping us to find the right individual. I felt fully supported and informed at every step along the search and interview process. They started by leading me through a market mapping process of potential candidates and acknowledged my feedback to shape the search in order to meet the unique needs of our business. I, along with our internal team, was impressed by the high quality of the candidates that were put forward, demonstrating the deep professional service at Brightwater Executive. Our search concluded successfully and on time. Brightwater Executive made a daunting task completely painless!

Having worked with the Team at Brightwater Executive on filling a number of senior roles in the past year, I would highly recommend them. They were very professional to work with throughout the process, providing a high level of service, and they successfully sourced high calibre candidates for us. They are passionate about finding people in professional services their perfect role and are committed to providing an honest and ethical service for the client, we were confident at all times that we only met candidates who truly met the job requirements

At Construction Industry Federation, we used Brightwater Executive for recruitment of a senior Director position in the Federation. We found Brightwater Executive to be very professional, efficient and effective in sourcing suitable candidates for the role, in facilitating a quality shortlist of candidates for interview, and their assistance in the final selection process for the successful candidate.

We have worked with Estelle Davis and Brightwater Executive for over 12 years now. A key part of our business strategy is the recruitment and retention of top talent and Estelle and Brightwater Executive have helped us achieve that. They have developed an in-depth knowledge of our business and culture over the years which has enabled them to consistently screen the market and put forward a shortlist of strong candidates. We are demanding and very particular as a client with a number of our placements being specialist roles which they were still able to deliver upon. They were also able to provide clear guidance on remuneration packages. I would have no hesitation in recommending Brightwater Executive and Estelle Davis.

I found the whole process with Brightwater Executive seamless from start to finish – right from Yvonne McNulty’s initial approach to me from about the opportunity, through to closing the offer. Yvonne followed up before and after each stage and her advices and support were invaluable in preparing me for my first interview for a new role in many years. I would highly recommend Yvonne McNulty as a savvy, experienced Executive Search Consultant whom I felt always had my best career interests in mind as well as meeting her clients’ requirements.

I have had the privilege of working with Estelle and the Brightwater Executive team to fill an number of Director, Head of Function level hires in multiple organisations over the years. Estelle is an exceptional senior talent acquisition partner who listens carefully to her clients needs, shares valuable and honest market insights, is exceptionally credible and has a superb breath of experience. Estelle's agile approach brings pace to the assignments and she has an incredible network that ensures she can deliver a portfolio of talent. Estelle works across so many senior role disciplines and has an unique understanding of cross functional team dynamics and interdependencies, an outstanding capability! Estelle is a fantastic listener, constructively challenges, and builds relationships to deliver success. Thank you Estelle for your hard work, dedication, tenacity and good humour on each journey, it was always appreciated and thank you for delivering on many assignments!

We first engaged with Brightwater Executive and Estelle Davis and her team in early 2022 when building out our new senior management team here in Dublin, all at CBI, PCF level hires. Estelle and her colleague’s deep technical expertise and industry knowledge in the payments sector was impressive, when hiring our compliance, risk, finance and audit roles. In particular, Estelle’s expertise in supporting and advising on job specs, her insightful and value add questions that supported us in profiling the ideal candidate fit for our new Dublin team build out, from both a technical and cultural team fit was second to none. She has deep expertise in recruiting for PCF appointments and her engagement style from client and candidate’s perspective is really seamless. We were delighted with Brightwater Executives’ ability to engage and identify strong candidate shortlists that offered great diversity, including local and international candidates. Our experience of the end to end recruitment process against all four PCF hires was very comprehensive and efficient and all our milestone time frames were met, in terms of hiring our new senior management team for our newly established Irish entity.

I have worked with Estelle Davis in Brightwater Executive on a number of senior technical key hires over the years and I have always found Estelle’s deep understanding of the insurance sector and technical nuances across multi-disciplinary roles to be excellent. Estelle’s ability in asking astute and insightful questions around job specs, team profiling and culture dynamics along with her collaborate style when it comes to defining the ideal candidate profile is so valuable. Her network and industry connections are superb and has always stood to us well, when engaging with Estelle to secure our ideal candidate hires. She is someone who is fully committed to finding the ideal candidate for her clients, she is passionate about what she does and you can really see that through her engagement style, approach and professionalism.