Ian Monk

Ian Monk co-founded Spotted Zebra, a London-based hiring software company, with the occupational psychologist Nick Shaw, its chief commercial officer, and is its chief executive. Spotted Zebra Solutions Ltd was incorporated in May 2020. The founders’ starting point, they told Startups.co.uk, was that “there was no way to objectively evaluate whether someone had the right skills for a role before hiring them.” The company’s stated aim is to connect 10 million people with jobs based purely on their skills by 2030.

Skills science first

Spotted Zebra combines skills assessment with interview intelligence in one platform. Recruiters build role skills profiles that mix personality, cognitive, technical and motivational measures, then assess and interview candidates against them. The company says its framework covers more than 32,000 skills and draws on almost a million assessments. It raised a £7.7m Series A in 2023, according to Startups.co.uk, and its enterprise clients include Walt Disney, Virgin Media O2, Paramount and Merlin Entertainments.

In April 2025 it merged its interview intelligence and assessment products into a single platform, and the following month won gold for use of AI at the In-House Recruitment Supplier Awards. Fosway Group named it a potential challenger in its 9-Grid for talent acquisition for 2025.

An AI interviewer for screening

In March 2026 Spotted Zebra launched AI Interview Agent, which holds live, adaptive, two-way screening conversations with every candidate on any device and at any time. Its questions are drawn from the role’s skills profile, each answer is scored with citations to the transcript, and the tool integrates with the major applicant tracking systems. The company says the agent is certified to ISO 42001, the international standard for AI management systems, and complies with the EU AI Act ahead of the August 2026 deadline for high-risk AI hiring tools. Spotted Zebra was named 25th in the Startups 100 for 2026.

Why it matters to UK buyers

Spotted Zebra argues that recruiters are overwhelmed by AI-generated applications and that screening is where good candidates are lost. Its answer is to screen every applicant against the same skills evidence and to record how each decision was reached. For large UK employers, and for those hiring into the EU where AI used in recruitment is treated as high-risk, that audit trail is likely to become a buying requirement rather than a feature.

Monk has taken an assessment business built on occupational psychology into AI interviewing without dropping the science behind it. That combination gives enterprise talent teams a screening tool they can defend to candidates, lawyers and regulators.