How we helped Colare hire a Mechanical Engineer with rare Onshape experience
January 2026
About Colare
Colare is a San Francisco startup building a hiring platform for deep-tech engineers. Their product runs realistic, simulation-based engineering assessments across mechanical, electrical, and software, so hardware-first companies can evaluate candidates on what they can actually do rather than how their resume reads.
Founded by Nain Abdi and Esther Thomas, Colare was introduced to TechKareer by Joshua Sum at Socrates Labs, an existing TechKareer client. To build the platform itself they needed a multi-disciplinary engineering team. The Mechanical Engineer was one of the first hires off that list.
The Challenge
Because Colare's mechanical assessments run inside Onshape, hands-on Onshape familiarity was a hard requirement. Across roughly 500 mechanical engineers we sourced, only about 3% had Onshape on their resume. Most of the market lives in SOLIDWORKS or Inventor.
On top of that, the team is fully remote with founders in SF, so candidates needed to be comfortable with a working window that overlapped with Pacific Time. The role also had to convert through an EOR (Rippling) for an India-based hire without surprises in the paperwork.
"Most of our assessments in the mechanical space run in Onshape. Let's keep that as a must-have for now."
How TechKareer Helped
We ran the Mechanical search in parallel with four other Colare roles (AI, Backend, Electrical, Frontend), and the Onshape constraint shaped every step of how we approached it.
- Onshape-first sourcing. Instead of casting wide on MCAD, we sourced specifically against Onshape exposure, even though it meant a deeper-funnel, higher-effort search.
- Founder-ready shortlists. Every candidate arrived with a written screening summary in a shared tracker, so Nain's interview time was spent on judgment, not resume parsing.
- End-to-end candidate concierge. Scheduling, reminders, timezone coordination, and prep all handled from our side. The founders only spent time on the actual evaluation.
- Offer-stage closing. When the EOR contract carried a standard office-attendance clause, we surfaced and clarified it for the candidate inside a day, keeping the timeline clean through to signature.
The Outcome
Alankrit came through in the very first batch of Mechanical Engineers we shared. Nain interviewed him, the team wanted to move forward immediately, and we worked through the SF-overlap timing in a single conversation. He accepted, joined on his target start date in January 2026, and started shipping into Colare's mechanical assessment pipeline within his first week.
He told us he was excited about the role specifically because it was building systems that improve hiring, helping companies judge engineers beyond ATS keyword screens. That alignment with the mission, more than anything else, was what closed the loop.
Meet the hire
Alankrit Prateek
LinkedInMechanical Engineer at Colare
One of the rare mechanical engineers we sourced who was already hands-on in Onshape, not just the usual SOLIDWORKS or Inventor stack. He bought into the mission early, his pitch back to us was that he wanted to work on systems that actually improve hiring, and he agreed to a 5pm to 2am IST shift so he could overlap with the SF team. Joined on his target start date.
What Colare Said
"Sounds amazing Harsh! So glad that it went well."