HackerRank launches Chakra: an AI that conducts job interviews

HackerRank, the company known for helping businesses assess and hire software developers, has launched Chakra — an AI agent that conducts job interviews itself. Chakra was tested for around six months and has already run more than 500,000 interviews, involving companies such as Snowflake, Snorkel and Capgemini, before being opened to all customers on Monday, 5 October 2026.

Unlike a traditional coding test, a Chakra interview is designed to feel more like doing real work. The candidate is given a task inside a real-world code repository and works in a canvas that includes an AI assistant. As Chakra watches them work, it asks follow-up questions — why they chose one approach over another, or how their answer would change if a new constraint were introduced.

The goal is not just a correct answer. HackerRank wants to measure harder things: critical thinking, sound judgment, and what it calls "AI fluency" — how well a candidate can direct AI: framing a good question, checking its output, and steering it toward a solution.

"The previous modality of evaluation was evaluating the output," said Vivek Ravisankar, HackerRank's co-founder and CEO. "Now, because of AI, anybody can produce an artifact." The question for employers, he said, becomes: can they understand the thinking and judgment that went into producing it?

Chakra also changes the structure of hiring. Instead of three rounds — an initial recruiter screen, a take-home test, and an interview with an engineer — all of it becomes a single Chakra interview. And although giving candidates access to AI during an interview might seem to make cheating easier, HackerRank says the opposite happened: suspicious-activity flags were 70 to 80 percent lower than in its comparable traditional assessments, because candidates no longer have a reason to secretly use outside tools.

HackerRank, launched at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2012 and backed by Y Combinator, now has more than 3,000 business customers — including Amazon, Nvidia, Clay and Replit — and a community of over 30 million developers worldwide. Ravisankar compares the shift to Apple's move from the iPod to the iPhone: the old product still has value, but the company believes the future lies with Chakra.

There is also a weighty question: how much of a hiring decision should be handed to an algorithm? Ravisankar says Chakra is designed to score candidates only — the final decision stays with humans. "AI is way less biased than humans, if you tune it properly," he said, arguing it can apply the same criteria to every candidate. But experts warn that automated hiring tools can inherit or amplify bias from the data and systems they are built on. New York City, for example, requires employers using certain automated employment decision tools to undergo an independent bias audit and notify candidates in advance — and Ravisankar acknowledges hiring is a regulated area, and complying with such requirements is part of what the company has built.

What does this mean for you?

Job seekers and developers: Big tech companies — especially those hiring remote workers — may start using AI interviews like this. The key lesson is not memorizing answers, but "AI fluency": learn to ask AI good questions, check its output, and steer it. That is the new measure employers are looking for.

Teachers and students: If AI can generate any answer, the value of memorizing answers shrinks. Education that teaches critical thinking, evaluating information, and directing AI tools is what will prepare students for tomorrow's jobs.

Employers and entrepreneurs: Tools like Chakra can speed up hiring, but don't hand the whole decision to a machine. Make sure the criteria are fair to all candidates, and remember: the final decision to hire someone should stay in human hands.