HackerRank Hires Former Facebook, Google Executive as President and COO

Bengaluru-based competitive coding platform HackerRank announced Thursday the hiring of Grady Burnett as its President and Chief Operating Officer.

The company also announced that it has crossed one million developers and 1,000 global customers.

Burnett will overlook global operations for HackerRank with a special focus on India, where he can bring his experience in leading strategic operations and sales, the company said in an emailed statement.

Prior to HackerRank, Burnett served as chief operating officer of app analytics company Flurry, which was acquired by Yahoo. Burnett also served as vice president of global sales and operations at Facebook, during which time he helped Facebook set up the India operations.

"As we continue to help make the world flat by ranking programmers purely based on skill, it was crucial for us to bring on Grady, an expert in global sales and operations," said Vivek Ravisankar, CEO and Co-Founder of HackerRank.

Burnett follows the recent hiring of Ahmed Aly, former senior Google engineer and competitive coding champion, who is spearheading HackerRank's digital hackathons, CodeSprints.

(Also Read: How Competitive Coding Platforms Are Changing the Tech Hiring Landscape)

"Having built high performing teams of thousands of people at Facebook, Google, DoubleClick and Flurry, I've personally seen the holes in the traditional hiring process. In the past, we used blunt credentials, like GPA or school, to filter through high volume of candidates. But these filters consistently leave out diamonds in the rough," explained Grady Burnett.

"Because HackerRank ranks programmers by coding skills, we democratize hiring and create opportunities for people from all walks of life. Customers such as VMware and Zenefits that report saving more than 70 percent of hiring costs are a testament to the innovation HackerRank is bringing to tech recruiting. I'm excited to partner with Vivek and team to take this growth to the next level."

Co-founded in 2012 by Vivek Ravisankar and Harishankaran Karunanidhi, HackerRank raised $7.5 million (roughly Rs. 49 crores) in July 2015, and has raised a total of $19.9 million (roughly Rs. 130 crores) so far.