{"id":100291,"title":"Saffron: Find Your Next 10x Engineer","tagline":"Companies use Saffron to evaluate how well software engineers use AI to code.","body":"**TL;DR:** Saffron gives candidates a real codebase and ability to use any AI tooling they'd use on the job. We capture every prompt, diff, and decision in a sandboxed environment that gets scored automatically. Teams can now get structured metrics on how candidates actually build, not just whether the final output compiles.\n\nBook an onboarding call here: [**https://trysaffron.ai**](https://trysaffron.ai)\n\n**Our Launch Video**\n\n\u003chttps://youtu.be/pJHXqTKKMRQ\u003e\n\n---\n\n**The Problem**\n\nAI coding tools have finally gotten good enough to actually change how engineers work. But the way companies evaluate SWEs hasn't changed at all.\n\nNow, interviews are testing the wrong thing and candidates are passing every round of your hiring process, before showing up on the job unable to build a single feature without AI doing the thinking for them.\n\nOn the flip side, companies are missing out on engineers who actually know how to use AI to be ten times more efficient.\n\nWe know because we've been on both sides. As candidates, we realized how how much potential there was to become 10x with AI. As founders, we’ve heard the same story from dozens of teams: \"They crushed the interview. Two weeks in, they couldn't ship anything independently.\"\n\n---\n\n**Our Approach**\n\nWe’ve built an assessment that embraces AI and measures how efficient an engineer is. Candidates get a real codebase, AI tools they’d actually use on the job, and a task that simulates engineering work. We capture the full process and evaluate it automatically.\n\n---\n\n**⚙️ How It Works**\n\n**Step 1: Create an assessment in under 5 minutes.** Point us at your GitHub repo or choose a question from our bank, configure AI agents, and invite candidates.\n\n![uploaded image](https://bookface.ycombinator.com/media/?type=post\u0026id=100291\u0026key=user_uploads%2F2767627%2F8e7827fe-4250-4411-b495-f0b5d2dbbd18\u0026variant=large)\n\n**Step 2: Candidates build in a fully managed environment.** They get an online IDE that they can customize, a timer, and a real task. No setup required on their end. After coding, they answer debrief questions about their own implementation — and we verify their answers.\n\n![uploaded image](https://bookface.ycombinator.com/media/?type=post\u0026id=100291\u0026key=user_uploads%2F2767627%2F9e27fefd-a405-4ae1-859c-5b83c72af8e0\u0026variant=large)\n\n**Step 3: Review results without reading a single line of code.** AI review agents score the submission across dimensions you configure with specific evidence from the codebase. We show you detailed metrics like prompts, AI reliance percentage, or tool calling, and give a deterministic score on how well the candidate did.\n\n![uploaded image](https://bookface.ycombinator.com/media/?type=post\u0026id=100291\u0026key=user_uploads%2F2767627%2F3645c5c3-534f-4a40-a8d9-d662bd13a0e9\u0026variant=large)\n\n---\n\n**Why Us**\n\nWe’re Robert, Jerry, and Kazuma. We met in high school, started building together, and have been close friends ever since. Robert studied at MIT and was at Jane Street. Jerry studied at Stanford and was also at Jane Street. Kazuma studied at Harvey Mudd and was published in NeurIPS and ICML.\n\nAll three of us were CS students recruiting for SWE jobs the entirety of our first semester of college. And after noticing how much our coding workflow had changed with the introduction of better and better models, we knew that assessments had to catch up.\n\n---\n\n**Our Ask**\n\n* **Hiring SWEs?** We'll set up your first assessment for free, configure it to your codebase, and work with you 1:1 to build out whatever you need. We're early and hungry. Book a call: [**https://trysaffron.ai**](https://trysaffron.ai)\n* **Know an engineering lead, head of talent, or recruiter** who's frustrated with their current process? We'd love an intro.\n\nCan't wait to hear your feedback!\n\n\\-Robert, Jerry, and Kazuma","slug":"Q5b-saffron-find-your-next-10x-engineer","created_at":"2026-04-27T18:29:36.573Z","updated_at":"2026-05-25T00:31:45.270Z","total_vote_count":33,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Q5b-saffron-find-your-next-10x-engineer","share_image_url":"//bookface-static.ycombinator.com/assets/ycdc/yc-og-image-c440a0ad1dacfb86eeeb343717479cc54d256614449b4ef719977a0a451f8bc8.png","company":{"id":31363,"name":"Saffron","slug":"saffron","url":"https://www.trysaffron.ai/","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/d3143a0fc23ce4251d146cce9ebb5799fc664317.png","batch":"Spring 2026","industry":"B2B","tags":["SaaS","Human Resources","HR Tech"],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/31363"}}