Gild, a TechCrunch Disrupt startup and a game-ified jobs platform for developers, raised $2.4 million in seed funding from Globespan Partners back in August. Since launching at Disrupt a year ago, Gild has grown quickly, and today announced that it has attracted 500,000 members across 174 countries.

Originally intended to be an all-encompassing career platform, Gild pivoted to concentrate on developers and engineers once they saw the high rate of early adoption among these two groups. While Gild lets developers submit resumes like any other job platform, it differentiates itself from the group by allowing companies posting their jobs to establish competitions or programming puzzles. Developers take these quizzes right on the site and are ranked according to their scores.

And now, beyond building, sharing, and comparing their skills profiles, developers is officially introducing “Face-Offs”, which let developers go head-to-head to visually compare their skills and achievements. Much in the same way I might, say, compare two outstanding pitchers for my fantasy baseball team. According to Gild, since beta launching Face-Offs two months ago, more than 300,000 Face-Offs have been set up by developers on the site.

And, big picture, since launching last September, Gild members have taken over 1 million tests on skills from C++ and Java through 30 other tech skills and languages. Each of these diverse activities, once completed, impacts a user’s skill ranking and determines who wins the dramatic face-off. So, choose wisely your opponents, grasshoppers, because the leaderboards don’t lie.

For more on Gild, check ‘em out at home here.

Crunchbase

• GILD

Company: Gild

Website: gild.com

Funding: $2.4M

Gild is where developers come to build, share, compare and improve their skills profiles. Gild skills profiles, based on hard data from testing, endorsements and real world validation, are the best indication of a developer’s capabilities. With a focus on what you know, not who you know, Gild is the fastest growing global community of developers. Launched in September 2010, Gild is backed by Globespan Capital Partners and has offices in San Francisco, California; Bangalore, India; and Beijing, China.

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