Beth Glenfield is a software engineer turned product leader and startup founder developing a more realistic answer to technical hiring in the AI era: assess whether engineers can collaborate, exercise judgment, and ship useful products when coding assistance is ubiquitous.
Glenfield was a software engineer and director of Women Who Code Belfast by 2019. She moved into product management at Puppet, co-founded a medtech startup, and worked as a venture scout, combining engineering and product experience with support for Northern Ireland’s startup community. She subsequently joined Ada Ventures’ angel-investor network, participated in Founder Labs, and pitched Stow with its second startup cohort in February 2025.
At AI Engineer World’s Fair 2025, Glenfield outlined DevDay’s approach to engineering assessment. Her argument: algorithm puzzles reveal little about whether someone can navigate changing requirements, work with colleagues, or connect technical decisions to business outcomes—especially when AI can generate convincing answers.
Her alternative emphasizes:
- Workplace simulations with AI teammates: Candidates build features for realistic business scenarios alongside AI agents playing a perfectionist, pragmatist, security specialist, or junior developer needing mentorship.
- Judgment beyond code generation: Assessments examine delegation, adaptation, mentoring, and technical decisions communicated through pull requests and ticket comments.
- Hiring for resource-constrained startups: Smaller companies need meaningful signals about collaboration and product judgment because they cannot rely on large recruiting funnels or absorb costly hiring mistakes.
For Glenfield, effective engineers are distinguished by how they direct AI tools, explain tradeoffs, and retain independent judgment under real working conditions.
