Andela Acquires Woven to Forge New AI Engineer Assessment Standard

NEW YORK, NY – January 22, 2026 – Andela, a global marketplace for technical talent, announced today its acquisition of Woven, a technical assessment company renowned for its use of real-world engineering scenarios and AI-powered evaluations. The move signals a significant consolidation in the tech talent space, aiming to create an industry-leading engine for identifying and vetting the specialized engineers needed to power the next wave of artificial intelligence adoption.

The acquisition brings Woven’s assessment technology, extensive library of job-specific scenarios, and its founding team into the Andela ecosystem. Woven's CEO and founder, Wes Winham Winler, will join Andela to spearhead the development of next-generation assessments designed to accurately predict an engineer's on-the-job performance in an AI-driven landscape.

"To power the AI ecosystem at scale, the world needs AI-native, enterprise-ready engineering talent en masse," said Carrol Chang, CEO of Andela. "Andela plus Woven equals the best technical assessment engine in the world to ensure AI fluency and real-world job success."

Confronting the AI Talent Chasm

Andela's strategic acquisition comes as enterprises worldwide grapple with a severe talent bottleneck that threatens to stall AI innovation. While investment in AI is skyrocketing—with a recent McKinsey report indicating 92% of companies plan to increase AI spending—the same study reveals that nearly half (46%) of C-suite executives cite skill gaps as a primary barrier to deploying generative AI tools effectively.

This challenge is less about a simple scarcity of developers and more about the difficulty in identifying professionals with the specific, nuanced skills required for production-grade AI systems. The World Economic Forum's 2025 Future of Jobs Report reinforces this trend, forecasting AI and big data skills as among the fastest-growing capabilities required by 2030. Companies are no longer looking for generalist coders; they are hunting for specialists who can navigate the complexities of large language models (LLMs), autonomous agentic workflows, and the rigorous governance frameworks that accompany them.

This acquisition positions Andela to address this pain point directly. By integrating Woven's sophisticated assessment methodology, the company aims to move beyond traditional coding quizzes and provide its clients with a reliable measure of an engineer's true capabilities and AI fluency.

Beyond Code Quizzes: A New Assessment Paradigm

The deal is built on a foundation of prior strategic moves. In March 2023, Andela acquired Qualified, a leading platform for building developer assessments, which it integrated into its proprietary Talent Decision Engine™. The addition of Woven is designed to "leapfrog" this development, according to Andela's Chief Product and Technology Officer, Barun Singh.

Woven carved out its niche by eschewing abstract algorithmic puzzles in favor of comprehensive, real-world engineering simulations. Its assessments often involved tasks like full-stack code reviews, debugging complex systems, and evaluating a candidate's communication and collaboration skills—metrics that are far more indicative of on-the-job success. This human-centric, scenario-based approach, now supercharged with AI-driven scoring, provides a more holistic view of a candidate's problem-solving abilities.

"With Woven, Andela is leapfrogging the development of world-class assessments for both AI fluency and engineering fundamentals," said Singh. "From day one, we will be able to apply Woven's scenarios to our talent network to benchmark skills and ensure our clients find the talent who best match their needs."

This combined platform creates a unified and scalable engine for evaluating talent. It aims to solve a critical modern hiring problem: distinguishing genuine engineering skill from the ability to leverage AI tools to generate code. By combining real-world scenarios with AI-enabled evaluation, Andela intends to "AI-proof" the hiring process, ensuring that the engineers it places possess deep, foundational knowledge.

The Rise of the AI-Native Engineer

Central to Andela's vision is the concept of the "AI-native engineer," a new class of professional with proven experience in building and deploying AI systems. The company has identified three distinct archetypes that enterprises increasingly require as they move from AI experimentation to full-scale implementation:

• The Builder: Engineers who can translate business requirements into functional AI components, including LLMs, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems, and agentic models.
• The Integrator: Specialists who connect disparate models, data sources, and tools to construct complex, multi-step autonomous agentic workflows.
• The Scaler: Professionals focused on the operational side of AI, ensuring systems operate reliably at scale while managing critical aspects of compliance, governance, and risk.

This framework reflects a broader shift in the tech workforce, where monolithic roles are giving way to specialized functions tailored to the AI development lifecycle. By developing assessments that can precisely identify and categorize engineers into these archetypes, Andela aims to provide companies with the exact talent needed for every stage of their AI journey.

The ultimate goal is to build what the company calls the world's "largest Forward Deployed Engineering army." This strategy involves embedding these highly vetted, specialized engineers directly into AI labs and enterprise teams, bridging the gap between model development and real-world business impact.

Woven's founder, Wes Winham Winler, expressed enthusiasm for the new chapter. "Andela already had a world-class industry reputation, talent network, and upskilling DNA," Winler stated. "Together, we're building the most accurate and scalable way to measure real-world engineering performance in the AI era."

With its global network of over 150,000 technology professionals and a client roster that includes industry giants like GitHub and Mastercard, Andela is now positioned to immediately deploy this advanced assessment methodology at scale. The acquisition is not merely a technological enhancement but a strategic move to define the very standards by which the next generation of elite engineering talent is measured and matched with opportunity.