Cercli Launches Cera: AI Hiring Agent to Revolutionise Recruitment Operations

Mohammed Fathy

Last updated 21-05-2026

5 min

Cercli has launched Cera, an AI hiring agent and AI-native ATS.

It unifies hiring, payroll and HR “under one digital roof”.

Cera automates screening, ranking and scheduling, cutting repetitive admin work.

Only 19% of core HR processes use AI, with more in pilots.

Gartner predicts half of HR tasks could be automated by 2030.

Hiring used to be a fairly human game. CVs piled up, recruiters skimmed, interviews were arranged after a bit of back and forth. These days, though, things have shifted. Remote work, global talent pools and yes, AI-generated applications, have turned recruitment into something of a high-volume, high-pressure operation. It can feel like a bit of a faff.

Against that backdrop, UAE-based HRTech startup Cercli has introduced Cera, an AI hiring agent designed to automate much of the heavy lifting in recruitment. Alongside it, the company has rolled out an AI-native Applicant Tracking System (ATS), built to plug directly into Cercli’s broader HR and payroll platform. The idea is simple: bring hiring and workforce operations under one digital roof.

Cercli, founded in 2023 by former Careem colleagues, positions itself as an “AI-native” people platform. In practical terms, that means it aims to unify hiring, payroll, HR and workforce management within a single system rather than forcing companies to juggle disconnected tools. Since launching, the startup has raised $12 million and counts high-growth names such as Humantra, Huspy and Ziina among its clients. It is now expanding beyond MENA into the US and Europe.

The pressure Cera is responding to is not imagined. Reporting by The Times on LinkedIn’s AI hiring tools found that recruiters spend roughly 20 hours each week on repetitive admin tasks, writing job descriptions, screening CVs, scheduling interviews. That’s half a working week gone before you even get to proper conversations with candidates.

Zooming out, McKinsey’s HR Monitor 2025 survey of 1,925 companies and 4,000 employees found only 19% of core HR processes are currently enhanced by AI, with another 32% still in pilot stages. So for all the hype, most organisations are only scratching the surface. Gartner goes further, predicting that by 2030, half of today’s HR activities will be automated or handled by AI agents. I reckon we’ll look back at this moment as the calm before the storm.

Cera is built to close that gap. It automates tasks including job description creation, CV screening, candidate ranking, interview coordination and feedback management, all within a single workflow. The system generates structured candidate summaries, flagging experience, strengths and potential risk signals such as job-hopping patterns or unclear career progression. Instead of merely filtering applications, it scores role compatibility and prioritises candidates who meet a defined threshold of fit.

That might not sound revolutionary at first glance. After all, plenty of platforms promise “smarter hiring”. But the detail matters. Cera feeds directly into Cercli’s integrated HR and payroll backbone, aiming to reduce fragmentation between recruiting and post-hire operations. In theory, that cuts down on duplication and manual data transfers, small things, but they add up.

David Reche, Cercli’s Co-Founder and Chief Technology and Product Officer, said the company views AI as central to the next phase of recruitment. “The future of recruitment is intelligent decision-making powered by AI,” he noted, adding that hiring teams need tools that help them identify the right candidates quickly while reducing operational complexity at scale.

On the flip side, there is always the debate about how much automation is too much. Recruitment is still about people. Chemistry, nuance, culture fit, these are hard to compress into an algorithm. But Cera focuses on the repetitive groundwork, leaving recruiters more time to engage with candidates and make strategic calls. If it works as described, that division of labour could be spot on.

From an ecosystem perspective, Cercli’s move feels in line with a wider shift we see across MENA. More startups are not just building apps, but foundational infrastructure, payroll rails, compliance engines, embedded finance, and now AI-driven hiring layers. At Arageek, we often speak with founders who say operational complexity is their biggest headache, not growth. Tools that remove friction are chuffed to bits welcomed, even if adoption sometimes lags expectation.

Cercli says it will continue expanding AI capabilities across workforce operations, signalling broader ambitions than recruitment alone. The company’s longer-term bet is that global people management will become increasingly automated, integrated and data-driven.

Whether every HR team is ready for that shift is another question. Well… I mean, change in corporate processes is rarely smooth. But as application volumes keep rising and global hiring becomes the norm, ignoring automation may soon be the bigger risk.

For now, Cera enters a market that is clearly evolving fast. And if Gartner’s forecasts hold true, AI hiring agents could move from novelty to necessity quicker than many expect. The direction of travel seems pretty clear, its just a matter of how boldly companies decide to follow.

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