Nigerian startup TalentQL has launched a pipeline to upskill Africa’s intermediate engineers via mentorship from individuals from Twitter, Tesla, Amazon, and Google.
Founded late last year by Adewale Yusuf, Opeyemi Awoyemi and Akintunde Sultan, also co-founders of Techpoint Africa, Jobberman and DevCareer, TalentQL hires, develops and manages remote talent for global companies.
The startup is building a pipeline of quality talent for African companies as well as source and manage top local talent for leading international firms. Its model includes building talent campuses in less-crowded African cities with proximity to top tertiary institutions. It currently has 3,000 vetted individuals in this talent network.
TalentQL raised a US$300,000 funding round in November, and recently added US$120,000 to that after being selected to take part in Techstars Toronto. It is now building on the early success of its technical outsourcing and recruitment service by launching Pipeline by TalentQL, a specialised training programme for software engineers in Africa.
The six-month programme will be fully remote and run a peer to peer learning format which will offer one-on-one mentorship provided by senior software engineers working in some of the biggest tech companies globally, including Twitter, Tesla, Gitlab, Amazon, and Google.
“The demand for senior engineers is at an all-time high. Up to 90 per cent of our clients are seeking senior software engineers. The Pipeline Programme was necessitated by this huge gap in the supply of senior software engineers on the continent as against demand,” said Adewale Yusuf, chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of TalentQL.
“While running TalentQL, we also discovered that a lot of the available senior software engineers lack the requisite soft skills that will position them for global opportunities. We are committed to providing practical solutions to these problems through our Pipeline Programme. The programme will not only train them on technical skills but will cover soft skills that are needed to succeed and compete in the global talent market. We are confident that this is the right move and will be solving a major challenge in the African tech talent market.”
At the end of the training programme, candidates can expect to have gained the requisite skills that will make them high-value tech talents in the market. Registration for the Pipeline Programme is open here.
