TalonTrace finds the engineers who are too busy building to update their profiles — by analyzing what they've actually shipped and the impact they've had.
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Sarah Liu
Systems Engineer · SF
14
shipped
12
published
5
conferences
Shipping Activity
The Problem
LinkedIn and job boards surface people who want to be found — not the ones who are exceptional at building. The best engineers leave a different kind of trail: the products they've shipped and the teams they've elevated.
70%
of top engineers
never actively look for jobs. Recruiters only reach the 30% who are already browsing.
83%
of resumes
overstate experience. Self-reported skills are an unreliable signal for engineering ability.
42 days
average time to hire
for senior engineers. Every week an IC seat stays empty costs your team velocity.
1 in 4
engineering hires
are regretted within 12 months. Wrong hires compound — they slow teams down and erode engineering culture.
Signals, not résumés
Every candidate is evaluated on what they've actually delivered — the kind of evidence that separates people who ship from people who talk about shipping.
Projects shipped, systems designed, and the scope of cross-team collaboration that shows real ownership.
e.g. led 3 major system redesigns across 4 orgs
Authored or maintained packages on npm, crates.io, PyPI — tools that real teams depend on in production.
e.g. 3 packages adopted by 48K+ teams weekly
Speaking at industry events signals deep expertise and the ability to elevate others — the kind of engineer who raises the bar for an entire org.
e.g. GopherCon 2025, RustConf 2024
Blog posts, RFCs, and architecture docs that show how they think about systems — and how they make the people around them better.
e.g. 12 posts on distributed systems design
How it works
Drop a link or paste text. We extract the technologies, seniority signals, and domain expertise that actually matter for the role.
Our engine looks at shipped projects, published packages, conference talks, and technical writing — real proof of impact that can't be faked.
Get a shortlist of passive candidates ranked by what they've shipped, their demonstrated impact, and domain fit — not keyword stuffing.
Be the first to source engineers the way it should be done — by what they've built, what they've shipped, and the impact they've had.