Remotebase hired Pakistan's engineers for Silicon Valley. Its next act is AI work

In January 2023, Qasim Asad Salam told BR Research that Remotebase had about 87,000 engineers on its platform and a team of more than 120 people. The company's homepage now claims more than 350,000 vetted engineers, and it leads with a different pitch from the one that made its name. Remotebase, a Lahore based remote talent company that has placed Pakistani software engineers with American startups since 2020, now sells what it calls forward deployed engineers: developers who sit inside a client's team and build AI features, workflow automation and internal tools.

Two failed startups and a payroll model

The founders' route to the idea was not direct. Salam told BR Research he built his first website at eleven, entered the industry when a college app went viral, then ran a software house, moved to the United States and started thinking about a tool to track the performance of software engineers. His cofounder and CTO, Talha Masood, graduated from GIKI in 2013 and, in 2014, began working remotely for a New York company with 52 staff, an unusual arrangement in Pakistan at the time. That company, he said, later became a billion dollar business. Masood told BR Research he then joined several Pakistani startups, all of which failed.

Salam says the two met at Kickstart, one of the first coworking spaces in Pakistan, while both were working on their own startups, and agreed that if those did not work out they would build something together. Masood dates the start of the partnership to 2018. Both startups failed, so they did. Remotebase launched in April 2020, according to MENAbytes.

The original model was closer to an employer than a job board. Remotebase recruited engineers, trained them in bootcamps and placed them in American startups, but kept them on its own payroll with a fixed monthly salary and health insurance, MENAbytes reported in March 2021. Clients paid a fixed monthly fee per engineer, the amount undisclosed. The company said it accepted only the top 5 percent of applicants, through an HR interview, a technical interview, a technical task and a final conversation with the CTO. It also said it had been profitable since its first month, a claim that has not been independently checked.

The seed round, the valuation and the marketplace bet

The company raised a $1.4 million seed round in March 2021. Indus Valley Capital led it, a week after closing its debut fund of $17.5 million, with Draper Associates and Hustle Fund taking part. MENAbytes reported that it was the first Pakistani investment for both Draper and Hustle Fund. Salam told MENAbytes: "Raising money was one of the most difficult decisions for us." At that point Remotebase had close to 30 engineers placed, according to MENAbytes, while Geo News counted 40 and reported a plan to hire more than 150 by the end of 2021.

In October 2022 it announced a $2.1 million pre Series A, co led by Indus Valley Capital and Hustlefund Ventures, with Soma Capital, Angel Squad, Draper Associates and angel investors from Redis and Careem. AsiaTechDaily reported a valuation of $65 million. With the two rounds, the publicly disclosed total is $3.5 million, and a search of Pakistani and regional coverage found no newer round.

The money came with a second product. Talently, launched alongside the round, is a lower touch version of the service: companies browse profiles with skill scores and talk to developers directly, for a subscription. Salam described it to BR Research as built from the data Remotebase already had on engineers. AsiaTechDaily put the number of vetted profiles at more than 60,000 at launch, and Salam gave about 87,000 three months later. Growth was fast, then uneven. Salam told BR Research the company grew 10 to 15 percent a month in its first year and 20 to 30 percent in its second, before a slower third year he blamed on the economic slowdown.

“We firmly believe that an engineer in Pakistan and Silicon Valley is only different because of location.”

Forward deployed engineers for the AI era

The company's current pitch is narrower and more hands on. Its homepage lists four kinds of work: workflow automation, AI features, internal tools and integrations, and product and infrastructure. The commercial terms it advertises are simple: one engineer to start, more as the work grows, and a month to month arrangement. Named customers include Fireflies.ai, Northwestern Mutual, Scale, Placer.ai and Aktos. A case study on the page credits its work for Fireflies.ai with 70 percent fewer reported issues and 40 percent more user engagement. Those are the company's figures, and the page does not say how they were measured.

The homepage also lists a client called Talently.ai, described as a text to voice product. The name matches the hiring app Remotebase launched in 2022, but the page does not say whether the two are related.

What is hard about selling engineers

The first difficulty is that the numbers no longer line up neatly. In 2021 Remotebase said it accepted only the top 5 percent of applicants. The vetted pool has since grown from 87,000 in early 2023 to the 350,000 plus now claimed, and the company does not say what counts as vetted, so the figures describe a funnel rather than a workforce. Its about page, undated but carrying a 2025 footer, lists 119 employees and more than 50 clients.

The second is margin. Remotebase has not disclosed what it charges or what it pays, and the gap between the two is the entire business. It began by keeping engineers on its own payroll with salaries and health insurance, and it has not said whether that is still the model. Whether AI tools shrink the demand for the engineers it places, or raise the value of those who can deploy them, is the question the new pitch is built to answer.

The third is concentration. Salam said in January 2023 that most customers were in the United States, with some in Dubai, and named Nigeria as the next hotspot for engineers after Pakistan. He has argued that one Pakistani company could change the country's IT exports, pointing to Tata Consultancy's $25 billion in annual software exports for India. Remotebase has not disclosed a revenue figure that would let anyone test that ambition. It has changed its pitch twice in six years, from salaried placements to a marketplace to embedded AI work, and we found no new funding round announced since 2022.

Reported from the company's website and statements, and coverage in MENAbytes, BR Research, Geo News and AsiaTechDaily.