How we helped a Menlo Ventures backed startup hire a Software Engineer

About NegotiateAI

NegotiateAI is an enterprise procurement platform backed by Menlo Ventures and founded by an ex-Apple leader. Their mission is to transform procurement into a strategic function for manufacturing and industrial enterprises. They start with indirect spend, where they guarantee millions in savings.

The platform combines agentic AI, LLMs, and RAG to categorize spend, identify unique parts, benchmark suppliers, and run automated negotiations. They are already in production with paying enterprise customers and running pilots with Fortune 500 manufacturers.

The Challenge

NegotiateAI was hiring two foundational engineers in parallel, a junior (1-3 years) and a senior (4-8 years), to build the infrastructure powering their AI-driven procurement platform. The bar was high. The role needed full-stack with Node and React, hands-on work with LLMs, RAG, and agentic pipelines, the scrappiness to iterate in a seed-to-Series-A environment, and the seniority to step back and architect when it mattered.

On top of the technical bar, the team needed engineers who could ship under SOC 2 and GDPR constraints, work with enterprise data privacy primitives (tokenization, sandboxing, anonymization), and own pieces of the platform. That ownership stretched from web scraping for catalog and price intelligence to supplier-facing agent workflows.

"A+ player, exceptionally good technically, exceptional leader. Hungry to build a $B+ VC backed AI enterprise solution."

How TechKareer Helped

TechKareer was introduced to Dominic through a mutual founder connection. After an initial discovery call we aligned on a simple, founder-friendly engagement. A small upfront per role to cover sourcing, and a success fee only on a successful hire. Once the engagement was confirmed, the first batch of screened candidates was shared within the week.

Our approach for this search:

• Two-track sourcing. Running junior and senior pipelines in parallel against a single shared bar, so the founder could compare candidates at different price points side by side.
• AI and scraping signal filter. Prioritizing candidates with real production exposure to LLMs, RAG, and web scraping, rather than tutorial-level familiarity.
• Structured screening. Every candidate was put through a profile review (resume, GitHub, projects) and a screening interview covering background, role fit, and targeted technical questions before being shared.
• Process advisory. Sharing recommended screening questions, SOC 2 best practices for remote engineers, and feedback handling, so the founder could focus on evaluation rather than logistics.
• Scheduling and follow-through. Coordinating interview slots across time zones, sending calendar invites, enabling recordings for async review, and keeping candidates warm through take-home and trial stages.

The Outcome

We shared four shortlisted profiles across the two roles. Dominic ran intro calls with all four, took three through a technical take-home, and offered a paid trial to the strongest candidate. He was a Founding Engineer at an early DevTools startup who had most recently been at Rippling, with the exact combination of startup zero-to-one instincts and enterprise-scale rigor the team needed.

The trial converted into a full-time offer he accepted. NegotiateAI got conviction through their own rigorous multi-step evaluation, and we kept the candidate engaged and aligned through every step. Strong enough a result that they came back to TechKareer for more senior hires shortly after.

Meet the hire

AS

Ashish Kumar Soni

LinkedIn

Software Engineer at NegotiateAI

Founding Engineer at an early DevTools startup, then a short stint at one company, then Rippling. He went through Dominic's intro call, a technical take-home, and a paid work trial before converting to a full-time hire. That backend depth combined with startup-zero-to-one DNA was what stood out across the four shortlisted profiles.

What NegotiateAI Said

"Do you have more senior excellent engineers you've done out of India? Thinking like a lead there."