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The Western expatriates who work in Saudi Arabia are mostly employed either by Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, on foreign military bases, or by foreign companies engaged in infrastructure development or other projects in the Kingdom. There are also fairly large numbers of expatriates employed in healthcare, education, IT, telecommunications and banking. In general, you will only be able to find a job in Saudi Arabia if you have specialist or technical skills that are in demand here.

Many expatriates are posted to Saudi Arabia by their existing employers. However, some job vacancies are advertised in the daily Saudi newspapers and on websites. A drawback for western job-seekers is that most of the newspapers are in Arabic, but the English language paper Arab News does have a small classifieds section which includes job vacancies, mainly in Jeddah. There are a small number of recruitment agencies which post vacancies online, but agency websites only allow jobseekers to post their CVs for consideration by employers.

It is very difficult for women to obtain jobs in Saudi Arabia, although not impossible. Most expatriate women in Saudi are medical staff or teachers, or work in all-female organizations such as women's banks and women's retail stores.