Karim Atiyeh learned early that building a company doesn’t come with a manual especially during a global crisis. When COVID-19 disrupted Ramp’s early momentum, he and his team built risk and underwriting systems from scratch, contacting customers one by one to learn how to support them. The experience was “very stressful, and also a lot of fun,” he recalls. This raw, adaptive approach reflects how Ramp grew into a $13 billion payment-processing fintech in just a few years. As Ramp’s Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Atiyeh is best known for driving its engineering-first culture and for building products that help businesses not just spend but spend wisely.
Born in Lebanon, Atiyeh moved to the U.S. for college and earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science and mathematics from Harvard University. His entrepreneurial journey began with Paribus, an email-integrated price-tracking tool that helped consumers get refunds automatically—a concept ahead of its time. After selling Paribus to Capital One, he co-founded Ramp in 2019 with Eric Glyman. At Ramp, Atiyeh leads engineering and product development, guiding teams across payments, risk, automation, and AI. His role is deeply embedded in company strategy, helping prioritize new initiatives based on product-market fit and execution feasibility.
He’s deeply committed to New York’s tech ecosystem, making it a point to recruit and nurture young engineers eager to learn and build. For him, great engineering is enabling others to move faster. “We don’t hire people to push paper,” he said. “Everybody has to build.” That mindset is central to Ramp’s culture and scale. Now, as the company expands into complementary products, Atiyeh is focused on refining the interface between humans and automation, an area he believes is still vastly underexplored.