Vacancy: According to an advert posted on the civil service jobs portal, Saudi Arabia is now advertising for eight new executioners.
It’s one of the most gruesome jobs imaginable, with low pay and no special qualifications required.
The Islamic kingdom is recruiting extra staff to carry out an increasing number of death sentences - usually done by public beheading.
The main role is ‘executing a judgement of death, but workers must also perform amputations on those convicted of lesser offences.
Saudia Arabia is said to be in the top five countries in the world for putting people to death, according to Amnesty International figures.
It ranked number 3 in 2014, after China and Iran, and ahead of Iraq and the United States.
A man beheaded on Sunday was the 85th person this year whose execution was recorded by the official Saudi Press Agency - compared to 88 in the whole of 2014, Human Rights Watch said.
Amnesty claimed there were at least 90 executions last year. Most were executed for murder, but 38 had committed drugs offences, Human Rights Watch added.
About half were Saudi and the others were from Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, India, Indonesia, Burma, Chad, Eritrea the Philippines and Sudan.
Saudi authorities have not said why the number of executions has increased so rapidly, but diplomats have speculated it may be because more judges have been appointed, allowing a backlog of appeal cases to be heard.
Political analysts say it might also reflect a tough response by the judiciary to regional turbulence.
A downloadable PDF application form for the executioner roles said they would be classified as ‘religious functionaries’ and that they would be at the lower end of the civil service pay scale.
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