Turing books $87M at a $1.1B valuation to help source, hire and manage engineers remotely – TechCrunch
When it comes to engineering talent in the world of tech, demand continues to outpace supply, a predicament so acute that by 2030, that disparity will balloon to 85 million positions being unfilled, according to research from Korn Ferry. Today, a startup that believes it can stem that tide with a more inclusive, global approach to sourcing, hiring and managing talent is announcing a big fundraise to continue building out its platform.
Turing — which uses AI to source, evaluate, hire, onboard and then manage engineers remotely (including the HR and compliance aspects) in a bigger platform that it calls the “Talent Cloud” — has raised $87 million, a Series D round of financing that values the startup at $1.1 billion. WestBridge Capital is leading the round, with previous backer Foundation Capital; new investor StepStone Group; and AltaIR Capital, strategic backer HR Tech Investments LLC (an affiliate of Indeed), Brainstorm Ventures, Frontier Ventures, Modern Venture Partners, and Plug and Play Scale Fund all also participating. The round was oversubscribed and so the company also opened up a SAFE note at a $4 billion valuation, which is now also oversubscribed.
The funding comes on the back of strong growth for Turing. Demand from engineers in far-flung parts of the world who could not or did not want to relocate to work ramped up. Jonathan Siddharth, the founder and CEO, told me in an. interview that the total pool of candidates has grown 9x to 1 million engineers and developers from 140 countries in the last year, with that pool either looking for projects or already engaged in them. (Note: last year when the company announced $32 million in funding, it told me it had 180,000 developers on the platform.) It covers some 100 technologies and 15 job titles currently, ranging from entry-level roles all the way up to engineering directors and CTO candidates, he said.
Popular requests are for full-stack engineers, those who specialize in front-end or back-end languages, and site reliability engineers. In the near future, Turing will expand into adjacent areas like project management, paving the way for an upcoming product where companies can engage entire teams on Turing, rather than individuals that are then potentially managed as teams.
Demand is also scaling on the platform. Customers span from technology companies through to non-tech companies that still need engineers to help run and build different aspects of their businesses. They include Johnson & Johnson, Coinbase, Rivian, Dell, Disney, Plume, and VillageMD.
“We now live in a remote-first world and everyone is racing to reap the value of that,” Siddharth said.
Turing was founded on some basic premises about hiring and remote work that have borne out in the current market climate, shifted and …….