Employers have become very good at finding means of screening out older workers without exposing them to charges of discrimination.
I would say that we probably would want someone around 40s or older for that position applied (or I guess so because we never get to ask those things)
I was in the step before the interview with the CEO of the company, and we approved 10-20% of the candidates. First steps were approved at maybe the same ratio, and the CEO decided not to hire anyone in the UK after trying for a long time.
We had only maybe 6 candidates for the last phase, and out of those, there were only 2 candidates we really thought could be approved.
I will say thought, we were committing a sin that now many companies are doing. We were expecting too much from the same person. I am sure that one person would be able to hold what that position required but I don't think the professional with that particular set of skills is easily available in the market. I guess money wise the company did not want to hire more than one person, but if it was me, I would have hired a senior instead of an specialist and a junior.