HackerRank, the rapidly growing Silicon Valley company that tracks down top programming talent for corporate jobs, is beefing up its management lineup by hiring former Facebook ad-sales executive Grady Burnett to be its chief operating officer.
Burnett will take charge of HackerRank’s sales and “go to market” efforts, making it easier for HackerRank cofounder and chief executive Vivek Ravisankar to concentrate on refining the Palo Alto, Calif., company’s products. HackerRank currently has about 120 employees; split evenly between the company’s Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters and India. The company got started in 2011, emerging from the Y Combinator incubator — but Ravisankar said he thinks of Burnett as “a late-stage cofounder of the company.”