Saudi Start-Up SBR Signs MoU with Jisr to Accelerate AI-Driven Recruitment and Support Saudi Arabia’s Digital Transformation
In a significant step toward supporting the digital transformation of Saudi Arabia’s labor market, SBR—a fast-growing Saudi startup specializing in AI-powered HR technologies—has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Jisr, one of the Kingdom’s leading platforms for human resources and financial management.
This strategic partnership aims to redefine recruitment processes by developing advanced solutions that enable companies to leverage accurate data and identify top talent more efficiently. The collaboration is set to reduce hiring time and costs, streamline procedures, and deliver more impactful outcomes.
Founded by entrepreneurs Saleh Baarmah and Hamzah Bawazir, SBR was established to simplify recruitment using artificial intelligence. The platform shortens candidate selection and interview timelines, applies standardised criteria to minimise human bias, and promotes fairness in hiring.
With a blend of commercial insight and technical expertise in data science, the founders chose to focus on recruitment—one of the most influential sectors in Saudi Arabia, where nearly two million people enter the job market annually, including 250,000 new graduates.
Through in-depth interviews and research, the founders uncovered major challenges facing employers’ resumes that fail to reflect true competencies, ineffective interviews with mismatched candidates, and wasted time and resources.
This led to the creation of the “Know Your Candidate” concept—modelled after the financial sector’s “Know Your Customer”—through a smart recruitment engine that objectively analyses skills and experience, offering a deeper and more accurate view of each candidate beyond the traditional CV.
A spokesperson from SBR described the MoU with Jisr as a strategic milestone in enhancing the recruitment journey through AI, stating: “This agreement will help companies reduce wasted time and costs, and rely on precise data to select the right talent.”
The spokesperson also noted that SBR launched its prototype in mid-August in collaboration with over 20 companies. The signing with Jisr marks a new chapter—delivering more accurate hiring for businesses, broader opportunities for youth, and contributing to a smart ecosystem aligned with Saudi Arabia’s digital transformation and Vision 2030.
He added: “Behind SBR is a diverse team of analysts, data scientists, growth managers, developers, and marketers, all driven by a shared passion to transform the recruitment experience in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf and take it to a global level. For us, SBR is more than a startup; it’s a national mission to prove that a Saudi tech product, built by young Saudi innovators, can compete globally and make a real impact on the hiring landscape.”
