The best way to win a programming job at a company like Uber Technologies Inc. is to prove you can write code better than other candidates—provided you can get on recruiters’ radar screens.

Uber and other tech employers are turning to San Francisco-based startup CodeFights to find talented engineers outside of their regular recruiting channels. CodeFights hosts online coding competitions for programmers, and companies pay to connect with the best-performing competitors.

On CodeFights, programmers compete against one another by writing code that solve a set of problems. They can also challenge bots that are programmed to code like engineers at companies such as Asana Inc., Dropbox Inc., and Quora Inc. For instance, users can compete against Uber’s bot for routing cars or figuring out the best way to match riders in carpools.

CodeFights awards points to participants based on how well they solve problems and review the code for bugs, and how fast they complete tasks. So far, the company is attracting coders via word-of-mouth.

“This is a marketplace based on skill and talent instead of pedigree,” says Tigran Sloyan, who founded the company in 2014.