Algora / About
We find engineers through the work they've shipped
Algora is a technical recruiter and hiring platform for software engineers. We find candidates through their open source work on GitHub, rank them against your job description, and place them full-time.
- 30+
- Full-time engineers placed
- 100+
- Customers
- 100%
- First-year retention
- 25+
- YC companies
What we do
Two offerings, built on the same ranking of open source engineers.
Recruiting
Our team recommends and places engineers from Algora's network of open source contributors. You share a job description and receive handpicked candidates within hours. You pay 20% of first-year salary when you hire, and nothing if you don't.
Screening
An agent that works on the engineers who already applied to you, inside your Ashby pipeline. It enriches each applicant, ranks the pipeline against your job description, advances the top candidates and archives the bottom in bulk. Teams report about 90% less time spent reviewing candidates.
Why open source
The argument behind everything we build.
A merged pull request in a project with real maintainers is stronger evidence of engineering ability than a resume. The code was reviewed and accepted in public.
Many of the best engineers never apply to jobs. So we find them through their contributions, and bring them to the companies whose work fits theirs.
Read the full thesis, including where it does not apply.
Who we've hired for
CodeRabbit ($1.5B), Air Space Intelligence ($3B), ComfyUI, Firecrawl, Trigger.dev, Activepieces, Golem Cloud and TextQL, along with 25+ YC companies and 60+ open source startups.
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How CodeRabbit hired an Applied AI Engineer straight out of his PhD
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How ComfyUI hired the founding backend engineer behind Comfy MCP
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How Firecrawl hired a high schooler who became their #1 contributor
Other placements include Nick, Founding Engineer at Trigger.dev (YC W23), David, Software Engineer at Activepieces (YC S22), and Maxim, Lead Engineer at Golem Cloud, who was hired after his pull request was merged into Golem.
Our journey
From a coding marketplace to a hiring platform for software engineers.
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2022
Uber for Coding
We launched an on-demand marketplace where companies matched with a developer for contract work in one click. After six months of learning from it, we moved on to open source.
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2023
Paid open source contributions
We relaunched for open source projects, with bounties and payments integrated on GitHub. This reduced friction and increased trust for paid open source contributions, and delivered on the original idea of "press a button and get work done".
-
2024
Bootstrapped and profitable
Algora became a bootstrapped, profitable business. Dozens of customers hired the engineers they met through Algora full-time, which pointed to a bigger adjacent problem: full-time hiring.
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2025
Full-time hiring
We started pivoting into full-time hiring.
-
2026
Today
Companies share a job description and receive qualified candidates within hours. Algora has gone from a coding marketplace to the most efficient hiring platform for technical talent.
How we work
What you can expect when you hire with us.
- You pay when you hire
- 20% of the engineer's first-year salary, after the hire is made. No seat fees, no monthly subscription, and nothing if nobody is hired.
- Reviewed work over resumes
- We rank candidates on code that maintainers reviewed and merged in public, together with their experience and background.
- Candidates arrive where you work
- By email, in Slack, and added to your Ashby pipeline automatically.
- Your feedback trains your agent
- Likes, passes, notes and interview feedback go back into the ranking. Each company's agent is backtested so hired candidates rank above archived ones.
- A paid trial, if you want one
- You can work with a candidate on a paid trial before you make a full-time offer.
- A public benefit corporation
- Algora PBC is a public benefit corporation. It became a bootstrapped, profitable business in 2024.
Who runs Algora
Algora PBC is run by its two co-founders.
Book a call with our CEO or email info@algora.io.
Keep reading
- How it works The steps from job description to hire, the two offerings and pricing.
- Our thesis Why reviewed open source work is the strongest signal of engineering ability.
- Customer stories Engineers placed at CodeRabbit, ComfyUI and Firecrawl, with the numbers attached.
- FAQ Short answers on pricing, candidates, Screening and working with us.
- Algora compared How Algora differs from sourcing tools, AI recruiters and recruiter marketplaces.
Meet your new hire today
Share your job description and receive handpicked engineers within hours. You pay 20% of first-year salary only when you hire.
- Handpicked candidates within hours of your job description
- Delivered by email, in Slack and into your Ashby pipeline
- Nothing to pay if nobody is hired
Get candidates in hours
Share JD and we'll send you devs who fit Share your JD and we'll send you engineers who fit