You are the IC who got promoted. You can read code, ship reviews, and ship interviews, but not all in the same week. We screen, interview, score, and recommend, against a rubric that understands what good actually looks like. You meet three engineers. You pick one.
no recruiter·first 50 candidates free·ships hires, not pipelines
The interview loop isn't broken. Reaching the loop is.
Mon 09:14
"I have 187 unread applications and a sprint review at 11. One of them is probably brilliant. I will not find them today."
· Eng lead · Series B fintech
Wed 22:30
"Doing screening calls at 10pm because we keep losing the good ones to faster companies. This is unsustainable."
· Director of eng · 80-person SaaS
Fri 16:50
"Recruiter sent six "great" CVs. None can describe a system they've built. We are not hiring CV-writers."
· Staff engineer · seed AI startup
The rubric
We evaluate the engineers you actually want.
Defaults · editable per role
Systems design depth
weight · 25
Conversational probe on a realistic system. We score against a published rubric: comfort with eventual consistency, capacity reasoning, failure modes. Not jargon density.
↓ AI screen + role-fit
Code quality (live)
weight · 20
A small, scoped take-home or live exercise (configurable). We score for readability, edge-case handling, and how the candidate reasons about the trade-offs they made.
↓ Role-fit assessment
Ownership signals
weight · 20
Did they fight for reliability when no-one asked? Did they own a thing past v1? We probe this in the interview and grade specific examples.
↓ AI first-round interview
Pragmatism
weight · 15
How quickly do they reach for the boring, working answer? We listen for "I would just" and what follows.
↓ AI screen
Mentor / be mentored
weight · 10
A short discussion of a time they helped someone else grow. Optional at IC1/2, default-on at IC3+.
↓ AI first-round interview
Must-haves you set
weight · 10
Hard filters from your post: language, stack, region, level. We do these first, before the model spends any time on the candidate.
↓ Triage
What Friday looks like
Three engineers on your desk.
247
Inbound applicants screened
94%
Top-3 conversion to interview
31h
Median time from post to shortlist
4.6h
Median time you spend hiring
For engineering managers, recent
Engineering managers who used to dread the inbox.
"Posted Monday morning. Wednesday I interviewed three engineers. Thursday I had an offer out. The candidate started the next month. I have not done that in six years of hiring."
VE
VP engineering
Series B fintech, 90 people
"My recruiter and I were doing twelve screening calls a week between us. Now I do three real conversations. Better engineers, less Sunday work, lower spend."
ED
Eng director
Series A devtools, 45 people
"The rubric is the part I was most sceptical about. Then I read three of them. It would take me an hour to write notes that thorough."
SE
Staff engineer
Seed AI startup, 14 people
"We compared two hires we made through Picked against two we made through our usual loop. Both Picked hires are still here. One of the others is not."