Andela Acquires Woven to Power AI Engineering Talent

As companies race to turn AI experiments into real products, they're hitting a wall: finding engineers who can actually build with the technology.

Andela, the global engineering talent marketplace, just solved that problem by acquiring Woven, a company that tests developers through real-world coding scenarios instead of theoretical quizzes. Together, they're creating what might be the world's most accurate way to match AI-capable engineers with companies that need them.

The timing couldn't be better. Demand is exploding for engineers who can build AI components like large language models, connect different AI tools into workflows, and ensure these systems run reliably without breaking. But traditional hiring methods can't tell who's actually skilled versus who just sounds good in interviews.

Woven's founder and CEO, Wes Winham Winler, is joining Andela to lead development of assessments specifically for AI engineering. Instead of asking candidates to recite algorithms, these tests simulate actual work building and deploying AI systems.

Andela started in Nigeria in 2014, originally focused on training African developers for global tech jobs. Over a decade, it grew into one of the world's largest technical talent marketplaces with over 150,000 professionals. This acquisition builds on their 2023 purchase of Qualified, another assessment platform, creating a unified system for evaluating engineering talent in the AI era.

The Ripple Effect

This isn't just about corporate hiring. By creating better ways to identify and develop AI engineering skills, Andela is opening doors for talented developers worldwide who might have been overlooked by traditional credentialing. Engineers from underrepresented regions can now prove their abilities through what they can actually build, not just where they went to school.

The platform means companies get better matches for critical AI roles, engineers get opportunities that fit their true skills, and the entire AI industry moves faster because the right people are working on the right problems.

CEO Carrol Chang put it simply: "To power the AI ecosystem at scale, the world needs AI-native, enterprise-ready engineering talent en masse." With Woven's assessment technology and Andela's global network, that's exactly what they're building.

The world's AI future depends on finding the people who can build it reliably and responsibly, and this acquisition just made that search a whole lot smarter.