Track record
Our track record in Japan.
Sixteen leadership searches for global technology companies in Japan. We hold back candidate names because the people are identifiable. Every client listed will take a reference call.
- 16Client engagements detailed
- 18Named client references
- 2003In Japan search since
Clients
Proven success in supporting global leaders build.
Our company is new, but our track record is longer and proven. Every client names selected here reflect companies we have worked for recently or in the past, delivering business critical leadership and senior GTM hires. Testimonials are available and references welcome.
Marked engagements (*) represent Country Manager or go-to-market lead appointments made through executive search. All represent the completed professional track record of Murray Clarke, including work delivered at the firms he built before Aspiring Partners. Clients marked (†) are those where the team under him oversaw all Japan hiring as part of an RPO program. This list is not complete. There are more clients from over twenty years in Japan that we have yet to add. If you are evaluating us, you are welcome to contact any company or reference named on this site.
View testimonialsPlacements and pipeline by role
Our focus is senior leadership, including Country Managers for startup-phase entries and for established Japan operations at global technology companies. We also support the leaders we place as they build their teams and make the critical hires that follow.
Country Manager
58.3%
Sales Manager
12.5%
Senior SE
12.5%
Senior AE
8.3%
SE Manager
8.3%
The chart reflects placements made and our current pipeline as at September 2026. The wider track record runs to more than 70 Country Manager and go-to-market leader appointments since 2003.
Case studies
Case studies by stage.
The stage decides who the right leader is and how long the search takes. Each case gives the problem as the client described it, what we did, and what happened. The consulting firm cases sit in the same list but unnamed, because at Partner grade naming the firm identifies the person.
Builder
Founding the infrastructure. Anchor leadership and the setup needed to establish a beachhead in Japan.
Fivetran
First enterprise sales lead
An internal search had failed to secure a candidate, and procurement delays had already lost the first pipeline. It needed a high-intensity reboot rather than a fresh start.
WinAppointed and operational within 90 days of engagement.
Nutanix
Go-to-market team
From a four-person base, Nutanix needed go-to-market expansion to launch enterprise operations, then senior leadership to run it.
WinPlaced the majority of the GTM team, then the Enterprise Sales Head and SE Head during scale out.
Pure Storage
FlashBlade Sales Director
A time-sensitive appointment to launch a new storage product, when flash was still new to enterprise storage in Japan and the brand was still emerging.
WinHire finalised within 45 days, off a pre-mapped shortlist.
Glean
Country Manager
Internal efforts could not surface a leader with the record required. The brief needed enterprise sales credibility and the appetite to build from nothing.
WinAppointed a leader with multiple Japan success stories behind him. Won on a VC investor recommendation.
GitHub
Founding Country Manager
Global fame, no Japanese entity. The role needed community-led growth expertise and enterprise sales credibility in the same person, which is a small pool.
WinJapan office established under a leader who bridged community and commerce.
Chainalysis
Japan Country Manager
Chainalysis had found product-market fit in Japan and reached a critical point: it needed a Country Manager to turn that traction into a business at scale.
AppointmentPlaced the Japan Country Manager with a mandate to scale the business.
Scaler
Market capture. Executive search for the leaders, and direct sourcing at volume for the team underneath.
Splunk
Country Manager
The business needed to move from small product-led selling to problem-led solution sales, which meant a leader who could change how the team sold, not just who it sold to.
WinTeam grew from 50 to 120 people and contract sizes rose substantially.
Celonis
Country Manager
A strong product without a proven leader to scale the Japan office. We worked with global leadership to find a Country Manager out of a top cloud firm.
WinTook the team from a handful of people to over 80 within a few years.
Workday
Go-to-market team, first year
Growth from a tiny team to fifty people inside a year, in a market where the brand was not yet known. We put a full-time recruiter inside the office to hire directly.
WinOver 50 people hired during the first year of the Japan launch.
Zendesk
Country Manager
Strong in SMB and mid-market, and needing a leader who could carry that into enterprise. We introduced the founding leader of ServiceNow Japan.
WinThe new leader took the company into large enterprise and significant growth.
VMware
Multiple Director positions
Fast growth and too much of the budget going to agency fees. The work moved to direct approaches and internal referrals.
WinJapan headcount doubled, hired primarily direct.
Fastly
Country Manager
A next-generation leader to expand in the digital-native sector. We kept the quality of introductions high until we became their main partner.
WinHired a digital-native, cloud-native sales leader out of Google.
Operator
Sector leadership. Targeted hires for established organisations backfilling, innovating or accelerating growth.
Recorded Future
Country Manager
The leader had left, and the replacement had to both grow the business and coach the younger managers under them. Few candidates are strong at both.
WinHired a leader with established credentials who stabilised the team.
Big 4 consulting firm
Multiple Partner placements
This pool of talent is narrow in Japan, and we know who they are. They move when they are confident their clients will follow and the new firm can service them properly, and getting to that point takes months.
WinPartner-level appointments made inside the firm in Japan.
Dell Technologies
Marketing Director, Services Head, Executive Briefing Head
An investment phase in Japan needing several key leaders at once, each able to operate inside a very large system while still moving quickly.
WinAll three high-impact roles filled.
Nutanix
Senior leadership team
Senior leaders for the next phase in Japan. The constraint is that executives of that seniority rarely want the pace of a company still scaling.
WinHired the majority of the Japan senior leadership team.
Sourcing
How we find candidates.
Most of the people we place are already doing the job somewhere else, and many of them are sitting Country Managers. They are not reading job ads or sitting in a database waiting to be called. The work is identifying the right people and getting a credible conversation started with them.
Open web and media research
We build the target list before we approach anyone. Press releases, results coverage, partner and channel announcements, conference speaker lists and Japanese business media tell us who runs what, who has just been appointed and where a tenure is coming to a natural end. Most of the names on a shortlist come out of that research rather than a search of our own records.
Referrals from our network
Murray's network and peer group takes in a wide range of current Country Managers and senior leaders in Japan, particularly out of the VMware ecosystem. That group gives us referrals, and just as often it gives us the introduction that turns a cold approach into a warm one. A senior person is far more likely to take the call when someone they respect has already made it for us.
Direct approach on LinkedIn
For English-speaking hires LinkedIn is still the strongest platform for reaching people we do not already know, and we use it properly rather than in bulk. Where there is a shared connection worth using, we ask for the introduction through the network first and go direct second.
Every approach is made in confidence. We do not circulate candidate details, and we do not name the client in the market until a candidate is genuinely interested and the conversation warrants it.
References
What our clients say.
Eighteen regional leaders and global heads of talent who have run searches with us. Every one of them has agreed to take a call.
Helped build our presence in Japan during a difficult time of year and for a very niche sector. Diligent, up front, and focused on delivering.
I've worked with the team for many years now and they helped me hire the key leader to scale our Japan business, and the one to take us through the merger into Mastercard. Great work.
Instrumental in hiring key people, including Country Manager, and delivering RPO. Their network in Japan is significant.
We almost exclusively found Murray to be our go-to recruiter. I highly recommend him.
One of the top recruiters VMware has worked with, not only in Japan, but across the whole of Asia Pacific. He is exceptional.
I see Murray as the only recruiter that really understands the markets he recruits into.
Impressive research and a job well done. Thanks for the great work. Happy to be a reference.
Great job Murray. Thanks so much for this. We are really happy with this key hire.
Thanks for your work. Nice job. I appreciate you running at a very intense pace.
Murray has been a tremendous help in hiring dozens of individual contributors as well as key managers for us.
If you need someone to assist as you try to enter the Japanese market, don't look any further.
Murray was invaluable. His advice, cultural guidance, and results were outstanding.
Murray can build a strong relationship and he drives things very passionately.
Murray helped build our Japan team, securing high quality sales and engineering hires.
His business sense and creativity helped fill a high level executive position in a short period of time.
Murray has done outstanding work for PARC in a difficult talent space. Thank you.
Murray helped us lock in a key leader for our Japan business. He did an excellent job.
Excellent work to hire a key sales lead for our new all-flash product in Japan.
Most search firms won't print this page. You get an unattributed line from "a VP Sales at a global software vendor", or a wall of client logos with nothing behind them. We can name the person, the company and the title because we asked, and because they said yes. Ask whoever else you're speaking with for the same list, and see what comes back.
Next step
Ask us about any one of these.
Every engagement on this page has a client behind it who agreed to take a call. If one of them looks like your situation, that is the conversation worth having.
Forty-five minutes with the partner who would run the mandate. We bring the market thinking. You bring the seat you most need filled.