Karat, the trusted standard for measuring technical talent, today announced the launch of the industry’s first-ever solution for elevating contractor engineering quality. Shaped by Karat’s experience working with some of the world’s biggest enterprises, including Citi, Citizens Bank, and Cigna, the new Partner Talent Solution creates a unified standard that elevates contractor talent, accelerates placements, and reduces delivery risk. With this launch, Karat expands its workforce transformation platform, giving engineering leaders the ability to measure and improve quality across every part of their organization – full time, early-career, and now contractor talent.

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Every year, poor engineering quality costs enterprises millions in delays, outages, and vulnerabilities. CIOs face the challenge of improving inconsistent engineering performance while lacking clear, comparative data and a reliable system to evaluate candidates across full-time and contract roles. Meanwhile, IT Service Providers (ITSPs) operate without consistent expectations or feedback loops. The result is a fragmented market where contract software engineers from ITSPs underperform full-time hires. Barely half of external contractors meet the technical bar set by Tier-1 banks, and fewer than one in four meet the bar set by leading tech organizations.

“Managing contractor quality has always been a challenge, especially when you don’t have a consistent standard and industry benchmarks,” said Michael Ruttledge, Chief Information Officer and Head of Enterprise Technology & Security at Citizens Bank. “Karat’s trusted third-party standard ensures contractors meet our bar, helps IT Service Providers build trust faster, and gives us invaluable performance insurance.”

Karat’s Partner Talent Solution enables technology leaders to set consistent technical standards based on industry benchmarks across service providers, roles, and geographies. Karat’s consistent interviews ensure that contractors meet these standards, and 24/7 interview availability shortens the time it takes to place them. Additionally, the Partner Talent Solution software gives CIOs insights to optimize which providers get selected for different engineering workloads and improve the efficiency of their contractor spend.

“Embracing a standards-based approach is a strategic accelerator for our teams,” shared Ilene Eng, SVP of Digital Engineering at Bread Financial. “It strengthens cross-functional collaboration, streamlines project delivery, and establishes a consistent framework for both internal teams and external partners to drive measurable outcomes. By aligning with proven best practices, we not only boost operational efficiency and reduce onboarding time—we also ensure every contribution is purposefully aligned with our broader technology vision in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.”

Karat’s Partner Talent Solution also benefits ITSPs through streamlined workflows, improved visibility, and objective performance data. This enables higher-quality placements, faster times to billings, and stronger partnerships.

“Elevating engineering quality is a top-line priority for CIOs who are looking to maximize the ROI from every dollar of workforce spend,” said Mohit Bhende, co-founder and CEO of Karat. “There’s never been a consistent, data-backed standard for evaluating contractor engineering quality. With Partner Talent Solution, we’re giving CIOs and IT Service Providers a universal language of quality so they can work better together, improve placement outcomes, and scale confidently. Engineering leaders receive higher quality talent, and IT Service Providers can win more work.”

As part of the launch, Karat is offering engineering leaders customized insights about their IT Service Providers based on data and benchmarks from over half a million technical interviews. To compare your engineering talent quality with your ITSP’s, visit https://www.karat.com/contractor-quality.

“Scaling engineering capacity through third-party service providers is an essential part of technology strategies at most big banks. But without a consistent, enterprise-grade evaluation process, it comes with significant risk,” shared Sanjiv Somani, former CEO of JP Morgan Europe. “Karat’s Partner Talent Solution creates a unified, data-driven framework that benefits both sides of this marketplace. It helps banking leaders ensure contract engineers meet their technical requirements, and it gives service providers visibility and clarity on their clients' standards. That alignment accelerates ramp time, reduces surprises, and ultimately raises the bar for contractor performance across the industry.”

To learn more about Partner Talent Solution, request your talent insights, or schedule a demo, visit https://www.karat.com/partner-talent.

About Karat

Karat helps engineering leaders transform their organizations. As the trusted standard in measuring talent quality, Karat provides a powerful system for companies like PayPal, Atlassian and Citi who want to take control of how they hire top engineers, elevate their teams and contractors, and stay ahead. At the core of Karat’s system are live, expert-led interviews, analytics designed to give leaders maximum visibility, and the most robust interview performance dataset in the world. Coming soon: A new Human+AI way to interview technical talent in the AI era. Learn more at www.karat.com.

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