# Vivek Ravisankar

> Vivek Ravisankar is the co-founder and CEO of HackerRank, the technical hiring platform he started in 2012 after leaving a developer job at Amazon. Frustrated by the hours engineers lost to unstructured interviews, he and co-founder Hari Karunanidhi built a way to measure programming skill directly. After several pivots and three tries at Y Combinator, HackerRank grew into a platform used by thousands of companies and millions of developers. Ravisankar's stated mission is to build a meritocracy in hiring, where a developer's skills matter more than their school, geography, or resume brands.

- **Role:** Co-founder & CEO at HackerRank
- **Organizations:** HackerRank, InterviewStreet, Amazon, Y Combinator (S11)
- **From:** India
- **Nationality:** Indian
- **Education:** Computer Science, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli (NIT Trichy)
- **Known for:** Co-founded and leads HackerRank, used by 2,000+ companies including Atlassian, Stripe, Lyft, and Goldman Sachs., Grew the HackerRank developer community to more than 7 million - close to 30% of the world's developers., First Indian founder to graduate Y Combinator.

## Career timeline

- **pre-2009** — Worked as a software developer at Amazon, where interviewing candidates repeatedly pulled him away from coding.
- **2009** — Co-founded InterviewStreet with Hari Karunanidhi, initially a mock-interview platform.
- **2011** — Accepted into Y Combinator (S11) after multiple attempts; first Indian founders to go through YC.
- **2012** — Launched HackerRank (founded July 2012) as a skills-based technical assessment platform.
- **2015-2022** — Scaled HackerRank across multiple funding rounds up to Series D, reaching thousands of enterprise customers.
- **2022** — HackerRank last raised funding (Series D, reported $60M), part of roughly $117M total raised.
- **2025-2026** — Positioned HackerRank for the AI era, describing himself as a 'forward-deployed CEO' and spending months in India meeting founders and engineers.

## Achievements

- Co-founded and leads HackerRank, used by 2,000+ companies including Atlassian, Stripe, Lyft, and Goldman Sachs.
- Grew the HackerRank developer community to more than 7 million - close to 30% of the world's developers.
- First Indian founder to graduate Y Combinator.
- Named to Forbes 30 Under 30.
- Raised roughly $117M in total funding across rounds up to Series D.

## Latest updates

- **2026-02** — Shared tech and business insights after spending three months in India, saying he is 'bullish' on the country's engineers and technology adoption.
- **2025-11** — Discussed the state of AI-era technical hiring - cheating, AI adoption, and the junior developer market - in public conversations.
- **2025** — Spoke at HackerRank AI Day 2025 on the transformative impact of AI on the developer ecosystem.

## Links

- Website: https://hackerrank.com
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/thervivek
- Twitter/X: https://www.twitter.com/hackerrank
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hackerrank/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/vivek-ravisankar
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-07-24