Turing raises $14M to help source, vet, place and manage remote developers in tech jobs

The emergence, and now seemingly extended presence, of the novel coronavirus health pandemic has made remote working into a pretty standard part of office life for so-called knowledge workers. Today, a startup that has built a labor marketplace to help companies source and develop teams of remote developers is announcing some funding as to look to double down on the opportunity and new demand resulting from that.

Turing, which helps source, vet and ultimately connect developers with tech companies that need them for either short- or long-term engagements, is today announcing that it has picked up $14 million in seed funding.

The gap in the market that Turing is addressing is two-fold: companies need to hire more developers but are facing tight competition (and high rates) for finding qualified people in their immediate vicinity; and on the other side, there are talented developers living in many more places than just the world’s biggest tech centers who may not want to or cannot (especially right now) relocate to live elsewhere and are unable to connect with the right opportunities.

“Talent is universal, but opportunities are not,” CEO and co-founder Jonathan Siddharth said in an interview. He and his co-founder Vijay Krishnan (CTO) are both from India and relocated to the Valley for school (both have post-graduate degrees at Stanford) and eventually work, but know all too well that there are plenty more talented people who don’t. “We love that we can take Silicon Valley outside of the area and to have all of them participate in it while still helping local communities grow.”

The funding is notable for a couple of reasons. One is the calibre of the investors. It’s being led by Foundation Capital, with individuals participating including Adam D’Angelo (the first CTO at Facebook and also the co-founder of Quora) Cyan Banister of Banister Capital; Ashu Gard of Foundation; and Beerud Sheth, the founder of another labor marketplace, Upwork (formerly known as Elance). Other backers include executives from Google, Facebook and Amazon that are preferring not to be named right now.

Two is that it’s coming on the back of some significant growth for the company. Since coming out in general availability a year ago, Turing has gone from $17,000 to $10 million in annualised revenue, CEO Johnathan Siddharth said in an interview. The company now has some 150,000 developers spanning 140 countries on its books, who are taking on roles at a range of seniority levels at startups that include Lambda School, VillageMD, Ohi Technologies, Nexxus Events and others.