The competition for engineering talent in Africa has never been more intense. Global companies offering remote positions with dollar-denominated salaries have significantly raised the bar for local employers. In this environment, your hiring process is one of your most important competitive advantages. At Deveote, we have refined our approach to engineering hiring over dozens of hires, and the most important lesson we have learned is that technical skills alone are a poor predictor of success.
Rethinking the Technical Interview
The traditional technical interview, with its whiteboard algorithms and trick questions, is an ineffective tool for evaluating engineering candidates. It measures a narrow set of skills that rarely correlate with on-the-job performance, and it introduces significant bias against candidates who did not attend elite universities or spend months practicing LeetCode problems. We have replaced traditional technical interviews with practical assessments that mirror the actual work our engineers do.
The Take-Home Project
Our primary technical assessment is a take-home project that candidates complete on their own time over three to five days. The project is designed to be completable in four to six hours by a competent engineer, but we give extra time to accommodate candidates with day jobs and family responsibilities. We evaluate the project on code quality, architectural decisions, error handling, documentation, and attention to requirements. We explicitly tell candidates that we value clean, maintainable code over feature completeness.
The Code Review Session
After the take-home project, we conduct a code review session where the candidate walks us through their solution. This is where the real evaluation happens. We ask about their architectural decisions: why did you structure the code this way? What would you change if the requirements evolved? How would this design scale? We are not looking for perfect answers. We are looking for thoughtful reasoning, willingness to acknowledge tradeoffs, and the ability to communicate technical concepts clearly.
Evaluating Beyond Technical Skills
The best engineers are not just skilled coders. They are effective communicators, collaborative team members, and continuous learners. We evaluate these qualities through structured behavioral interviews that focus on past experiences rather than hypothetical scenarios. Tell me about a time you had to simplify a complex technical concept for a non-technical stakeholder. Describe a situation where you disagreed with a technical decision and how you handled it. What is the most valuable thing you learned in the past year and how did you learn it?
Growth Mindset
We specifically look for evidence of a growth mindset, the belief that abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. Candidates who talk about their failures, what they learned, and how they improved are more valuable than candidates who only highlight their successes. The technology landscape changes constantly, and engineers who are comfortable being beginners and learning new things will thrive in our environment.
Competing with Global Salaries
We cannot and should not try to match the salaries offered by FAANG companies hiring remotely in Africa. Instead, we compete on factors that matter to many engineers beyond compensation: meaningful work on products that impact millions of Africans, rapid career growth and leadership opportunities, a collaborative and supportive team culture, equity participation in the ventures we build, and the opportunity to shape the technical direction of a growing company.
Transparent Compensation
We publish our salary bands openly and explain how compensation decisions are made. This transparency builds trust with candidates and eliminates the negotiation dynamics that often disadvantage underrepresented groups. Our compensation framework accounts for experience level, role complexity, and market rates, with clear criteria for advancement.
Onboarding for Success
Hiring is only half the equation. A great hire can fail if the onboarding experience is poor. We have a structured thirty-sixty-ninety day onboarding program that pairs new engineers with a buddy, provides clear ramp-up goals, and includes regular check-ins with their manager. By the end of ninety days, a new engineer should have shipped meaningful code, built relationships across the team, and developed a clear understanding of our product and codebase.
Conclusion
Hiring great engineers in Africa requires a holistic approach that goes beyond technical assessments. By evaluating candidates on their problem-solving approach, communication skills, growth mindset, and cultural alignment, you build a team that is greater than the sum of its parts. The investment in a thoughtful hiring process pays dividends in team performance, retention, and culture for years to come.