How we helped Colare hire an Electrical Engineer to close out their core engineering team

About Colare

Colare is a San Francisco startup building a hiring platform for deep-tech engineers, running simulation-based assessments across mechanical, electrical, and software disciplines, with real CAD and EDA tooling streamed to candidates' browsers. Founded by Nain Abdi and Esther Thomas, the team had already brought on a Mechanical Engineer and a Full-Stack Engineer through TechKareer and came back to fill the seat that would round out their core team.

The Challenge

The Electrical Engineer hire was the most specialized of the engagement. The person needed to own EE assessments end-to-end. That meant real hands-on depth in KiCad and Altium, taste for building structured evaluations, and the judgment to think about how deep-tech and hardtech teams actually hire. Most strong EEs we approached were heads-down in design work; most TAs with EE awareness lacked the engineering depth Colare needed.

As the team got more specific about how this role would plug into Colare's roadmap, we partnered with Nain and Esther to calibrate the brief in real time, sharing what each constraint was costing in candidate volume so the founders could make sharp trade-offs without slowing the search down.

"Both look great Harsh, could you ping them for an interview?"

How TechKareer Helped

We treated this as a partnership, not a transaction. The brief evolved with the product, and our search evolved alongside it.

• Consultative brief calibration. We brought real market data to each criterion (pool size, comp distribution, typical career arcs) so the founders could decide trade-offs from evidence, not intuition.
• Multi-pool parallel sourcing. Senior EEs interested in hiring-system work, TAs with EE academic backgrounds, and EE engineering managers were all sourced in parallel, multiplying our shots at a strong fit per week.
• Founder-ready shortlists. Every profile arrived with a written screening summary, so Nain's interviews started from substance instead of resume parsing.
• Creative offer closing. At offer stage we mapped both the candidate's notice period and her contract's buy-out clause, giving the founders flexibility on start date and keeping comp within the original budget.

The Outcome

Supriya stood out the moment Nain spoke with her. She came in with the rare blend the team had been searching for, and after a single conversation Colare wanted to move forward. We landed comp inside Colare's original budget, used her current contract's buy-out clause to shave 15 days off the notice period for a small fraction of one month's salary, and got her onboarded fast. That was the hire that closed Colare's core engineering team.

Meet the hire

SG

Supriya Ghodke

LinkedIn

Electrical Engineer at Colare

The kind of EE who closes a search by herself. Hands-on with KiCad and Altium, instinct for assessment design, and the engineering depth Colare needed to own the electrical side of their platform. Strong enough on her own that Nain was ready to commit after one conversation, and a clean buy-out negotiation let her start ahead of schedule.

What Colare Said

"I would love to move forward with Supriya."