Terminal, the leading global hiring platform for software developers, today announced the launch of the first AI Fluency standard for hiring engineering talent. As software engineering shifts from traditional code authoring to agentic orchestration, Terminal’s new AI Fluency standard helps organizations identify engineers with the architectural context and integrated AI workflows required for the AI-native era.
“The gap between a traditional coder and an AI fluent builder is now the difference between incremental progress and a true competitive advantage,” said Dylan Serota, CEO and Co-Founder at Terminal. “We’ve hired thousands of engineers for hundreds of the fastest-growing companies through our global talent marketplace. We deeply understand how AI continues to impact software delivery and how engineers are leveraging AI in their daily workflows.”
Terminal’s New AI Fluency Standard
Starting today, Terminal customers can view AI Fluency signals on candidate profiles to evaluate AI workflow and agentic skills. Pulling from nearly a decade of experience hiring thousands of engineers, and inspired by AI leaders like Anthropic, Terminal has developed a new rubric for identifying and hiring the top AI fluent talent. AI Fluency for software engineers is the mastery of AI code generation, agentic orchestration, and architectural governance. It is a software engineer’s ability to move beyond code to direct parallel agents, navigate unfamiliar languages, and maintain deep system ownership and product sense.
Through a structured candidate onboarding and live interview screening process, Terminal classifies engineers into three AI fluency levels:
- AI Assisted: Developers who still manually write their code and use AI for debugging, research, or suggestions.
- AI Enabled: Engineers who regularly use coding assistants like Claude or Cursor to move faster and improve output.
- AI Native: Builders who lead with agentic delivery for the entire lifecycle, from planning and prototyping to coding and pull request reviews.
Candidate profiles now highlight shipped AI products, showcasing actual AI products that engineers have built and shipped. Customers can quickly find vetted candidates who have deployed relevant products such as specialized chatbots, complex RAG systems, proprietary AI models, and more.
From Coders to Builders
The value of software engineering has fundamentally shifted. While developers were once assessed on their ability to handcraft solutions, today’s landscape requires builders who can leverage parallel coding agents and maintain deep system ownership.
The Terminal talent platform’s integrated AI Fluency standard provides transparency into how top software engineers leverage AI coding tools and agentic workflows to ship faster than ever. Today, Terminal’s customers can find pre-vetted AI fluent talent in Canada, Latin America, and Europe who can unlock what’s possible with AI.
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