The HackerRank Python certification is a role-based skill assessment used by employers for hiring screening. It comes in two levels — Python Basic and Python Intermediate — and is taken directly on the HackerRank platform as a timed coding challenge. This free printable PDF helps you review the conceptual knowledge you need before sitting down to write code under exam conditions.
Both certification levels test your ability to solve real programming problems. The PDF format is ideal for offline study, annotating key concepts, and running through topic checklists before your exam date.
The Basic certification focuses on core Python language fundamentals. You need a solid grasp of data types — integers, floats, strings, booleans, lists, tuples, dictionaries, and sets — and how to manipulate them. Control flow structures such as if/elif/else, for loops, while loops, and the break, continue, and pass keywords are tested through applied problem-solving.
Functions are central to every Basic problem. You should know how to define functions with def, work with positional parameters, use *args and **kwargs, write lambda expressions, and return values correctly. List comprehensions, dictionary comprehensions, and set comprehensions appear frequently as efficient alternatives to explicit loops.
String manipulation is another major area: split(), join(), strip(), replace(), format(), and f-strings are all fair game. File I/O using open(), read(), write(), and the with statement is tested, as is exception handling with try/except/finally, raising exceptions, and defining custom exception classes. Modules and imports — including import, from … import, and the __name__ == '__main__' pattern — round out the Basic syllabus along with OOP basics: class definition, __init__, self, instance vs. class variables, and single inheritance.
The Intermediate certification builds on the Basic topics with more advanced language features. Iterators and generators are key: you need to understand the yield keyword, generator expressions, and the itertools module. Decorators — including functools.wraps, @property, @staticmethod, and @classmethod — are commonly tested.
Context managers using the with statement, __enter__, and __exit__ appear in problem descriptions. Advanced OOP is a significant focus: multiple inheritance, super(), Python's Method Resolution Order (MRO), and dunder methods such as __str__, __repr__, __len__, and __eq__ are all in scope.
Functional programming tools — map(), filter(), reduce(), zip(), and enumerate() — are expected knowledge. Regular expressions using the re module (including match, search, findall, groups, and named groups) frequently show up in text-processing problems. The datetime module, the collections module (Counter, defaultdict, namedtuple, deque, OrderedDict), JSON handling with json.loads() and json.dumps(), and unit testing basics with unittest and assert statements complete the Intermediate topic list.
Alongside your PDF study, online practice tests let you simulate the timed, problem-solving format of the actual HackerRank certification. Working through interactive questions reinforces conceptual knowledge and exposes gaps before exam day.
Visit our HackerRank Python practice test page for free online questions covering both the Basic and Intermediate certification levels.