Temperature monitoring during laser metal deposition (LMD) aids process control to ensure high-quality production. However, the fluctuating emissivity of the melt pool limits the accuracy of the existing non-contact temperature measuring devices. Thus, this work explores a new temperature monitoring technique, where the thermal radiation emitted by the processing zone was collected with a near-infrared (NIR) spectrometer and fitted to Planck's law to determine the temperature. This work has established the optimised angle and distance of the fiber probe from the LMD processing area to maximise the spectral signal acquisition. The temperature determined from the technique was cross-validated with a thermocouple, resulted in a small deviation of 2.39%. The applicability of the spectroscopic method for continuous temperature monitoring of the LMD process has been demonstrated. The optimised placement for the fiber probe end was determined at the 45˚ angle relative to the surface of the substrate and positioned 5 cm away from the molten pool. The temperature during the LMD process decreased gradually then stabilised after approximately 17 mm track length, resembling those reports in prior studies. Our findings support the practicality of the proposed temperature monitoring approach in LMD.