--- title: Colare Brings Simulation-Based Technical Screening to Aerospace and Defense Firms Short of Engineers description: San Francisco startup Colare raised a $2.5M pre-seed to test hardware engineering candidates in CAD, PCB and FEA simulations before the first interview. author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief) date: 2026-10-26T13:04:15.219Z updated: 2026-10-26T13:04:15.240Z canonical: https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/technical-screening-hardware-engineers-colare image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/colare-founders-esther-thomas-nain-abdi.webp categories: Artificial Intelligence, Startups content_type: Spotlight region: San Francisco publication: Sovereign Magazine about: - type: Organization name: Colare description: Colare is a San Francisco company that runs simulation-based technical assessments for hiring hardware engineers, testing candidates in CAD, PCB design, thermal analysis, finite element analysis and systems problem solving before interviews. It was founded by Nain Abdi and Esther Thomas and began as a University of Waterloo student startup. url: https://www.colare.com/ industry: HR technology --- Colare, a San Francisco startup that tests hardware engineering candidates by watching them work through simulations of the job, has launched publicly with a $2.5 million pre-seed round from Afore Capital, Garage Capital and Acadian Ventures. Its customers range from newly funded startups to multi-billion-dollar aerospace manufacturers, and about half of them are in aerospace and defense. Hiring a single mechanical, electrical or embedded engineer takes roughly 40 hours of senior engineering time across phone screens, take-home reviews and onsite interviews, Colare says. Its assessments run before anyone books an interview, so a hiring team can see how a candidate handles a realistic engineering problem in the tools the job uses, and senior engineers spend interview time only on the candidates who pass. ## Technical Screening for Hardware Engineers in Aerospace and Defense > "Hardware companies are building some of the most technically ambitious products in the world, and they are still evaluating engineers with proxies for whether someone can actually do the job." > — Esther Thomas, co-founder and co-CEO of Colare Aerospace, defense and manufacturing companies are among the largest employers of hardware engineers, and most screen candidates through several technical rounds, from presentations and take-home exercises to onsite interviews. The rounds that test the actual work come last and only engineers can run them, so every candidate who should have been filtered out earlier takes hours of a senior engineer's time away from their own projects. Software companies have used coding tests to screen developers at scale for years, and Colare says hardware teams have had no reliable equivalent. Attrition in the aerospace and defense workforce reached nearly 15% in 2024, more than double the rate across other US industries, according to a survey by the Aerospace Industries Association and McKinsey. The [Bureau of Labor Statistics](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/aerospace-engineers.htm) projects about 4,500 openings for aerospace engineers each year on average over the decade to 2034, many of them to replace people who retire or move to other occupations. [Venture funding for defense and related technology startups](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/defense-investment-gap-bain-aia-report) reached $35.6 billion in the first half of 2026, according to PitchBook data, and one of Colare's space customers is adding up to 50 open roles a month. AI tools have also made the usual signals less reliable, Thomas said, because résumés can be inflated and interview answers prepared with help, so both say less than they did about how a candidate will perform in the job. ## How Colare's Simulation-Based Technical Assessments Work A company starts by uploading a job description. Colare maps the role to engineering assessments in disciplines including CAD, PCB design, thermal analysis, finite element analysis (FEA) and systems problem solving, and candidates complete them in simulations of the tools they would use on the job. Colare scores both the candidate's process and the final output, returns a debrief on each candidate with a ranking against the rest of the pool, and handles scheduling and the hiring steps particular to each industry. It connects to the applicant tracking systems companies already use. ![Candidates working on a motor mount design in Colare's CAD simulation assessment](https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/colare-cad-simulation-assessments.webp) Hardware engineering rarely has one correct answer, as engineers trade off performance, cost, manufacturability, reliability and physical constraints. Colare scores those judgments with rubrics informed by senior engineers who have shipped hardware, with the aim of turning what an experienced engineer looks for in a candidate into a test that can be applied to hundreds of applicants against the same standard. ![A sample Colare candidate scorecard with a skill-by-skill breakdown of an engineering assessment](https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/colare-candidate-scorecard.webp) Co-founder and co-CEO Nain Abdi said hardware engineering "is not about memorizing an equation" but about how engineers "take that knowledge and apply it to the constraints of building in the physical world." Skills-test providers such as iMocha and Alooba sell question-based tests in mechanical engineering and PCB design, while Colare's candidates do the engineering work itself in the tools. ## Colare's Customers, From a Two-Person Startup to Public Manufacturers For a two-person chemical manufacturing startup hiring its first electrical engineer, Colare provided the technical evaluation its founders could not run themselves. "One of the challenges I've always had is actually doing a technical interview for someone," said John Slack, chief executive of chemical startup Rhoic, adding that neither he nor his co-founder is an electrical engineer. "We don't know what good looks like in an answer." At a subsidiary of a public manufacturer, Colare found major engineering gaps in a candidate who had passed the initial screen and was due to meet the chief executive in the final round, so the problem came to light before the candidate reached senior leadership. ## Nain Abdi and Esther Thomas, From Waterloo to San Francisco Colare began as a student startup at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. Abdi, an electrical engineering student there, had met the problem as an electrical engineer at Ford, where his team had stopped trusting résumés because candidates who looked strong on paper often struggled in technical interviews. The founders developed the idea in Waterloo's Velocity program for student startups in 2024, won first place in its pitch competition and secured a pilot customer through the university's Enterprise Co-op program, before moving the company to San Francisco. Thomas, who shares the chief executive role with Abdi, said the cost of a mistake is higher in hardware than in most fields, because one wrong hire "could mean a failed launch, a delayed mission or a lost contract." That risk is why engineers stop their own work to interview, and Colare's aim is to take the judgment they use when screening and turn it into assessments that can be run across every applicant. ## Colare's $2.5M Pre-Seed Round and Plans for Skills-Based Hiring The $2.5 million will go toward scaling the platform. Afore Capital is a San Francisco firm that invests at the pre-seed stage. Garage Capital is based in Kitchener, Ontario, next to Waterloo, and backs Canadian and Y Combinator startups. Acadian Ventures invests in workplace and HR technology companies, and its general partner Dr. Thomas Otter previously led product at SAP SuccessFactors. "With the rapid growth of robotics technologies and the emergence of physical AI, the demand to fairly and robustly assess engineering skills is vast," Otter said. "We think the Colare team has what it takes to help companies evaluate and identify great engineers." Colare plans to use its assessment data to build a wider picture of what engineers can do, including how they are likely to perform on problems they have never been tested on. The founders expect that as companies get better at measuring ability directly, skills-based hiring will take over and skill will replace pedigree as the main thing employers hire on. **About Colare** Colare is a San Francisco company that runs simulation-based technical assessments for hiring hardware engineers, testing candidates in CAD, PCB design, thermal analysis, finite element analysis and systems problem solving before interviews. It was founded by Nain Abdi and Esther Thomas and began as a University of Waterloo student startup. [Website](https://www.colare.com/) ## FAQ **Q: What is technical screening?** Technical screening is the stage of hiring that tests whether a candidate has the skills a role needs, usually before the longer interviews. In software it is often a coding test. Colare applies the same idea to hardware roles, with simulations in CAD, PCB design, thermal analysis and FEA that show how a candidate works through a realistic problem. **Q: How do companies evaluate hardware engineering candidates?** Most aerospace, defense and manufacturing companies use several rounds, including phone screens, presentations, take-home exercises and onsite interviews, and the rounds that test the actual work come last. Colare moves that test to the start, so senior engineers interview only candidates who have already shown they can do the work. **Q: How much engineering time does it take to hire a hardware engineer?** Colare says hiring a single mechanical, electrical or embedded engineer takes roughly 40 hours of senior engineering time across phone screens, take-home reviews and onsite interviews. **Q: How has AI changed technical screening?** Résumés can be inflated and interview answers prepared with AI help, which makes both weaker evidence of what a candidate can do. Colare's simulations have candidates work through an engineering problem in the tools themselves, and score the process as well as the final answer. **Q: Who invested in Colare?** Afore Capital, Garage Capital and Acadian Ventures invested in Colare's $2.5 million pre-seed round, announced in October 2026.