Today I am going to share some biggest and popular programming contests that are being organized by big IT companies like Google, IBM, Microsoft, etc. These are organized in order to find talented programmers all over the world. Programming languages like C, C++, JAVA, etc can be used to participate. Below I have provided a short description of each contest along with their official website so that you can get more details about them.

Google Code Jam
https://code.google.com/codejam/.
Google Code Jam is an international programming competition hosted and administered by Google. The competition began in 2003 as a means to identify top engineering talent for potential employment at Google. The competition consists of a set of algorithmic problems that must be solved in a fixed amount of time. Competitors may use any programming language and development environment to obtain their solutions.

The ACM-IPC International Collegiate Programming Contest
http://icpc.baylor.edu/ 
ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (abbreviated as ACM-ICPC or just ICPC) is an annual multi-tiered competitive programming competition among the universities of the world. The contest is sponsored by IBM.

The ICFP Programming Contest
http://www.icfpconference.org/contest.html
The ICFP Programming Contest is an international programming competition held annually around June or July since 1998, with results announced at the International Conference on Functional Programming. Teams may be of any size and any programming language(s) may be used. There is also no entry fee. Participants have 72 hours to complete and submit their entry over the Internet. There is often also a 24-hour lightning division.

Microsoft Imagine Cup
http://www.imaginecup.com/
Imagine Cup is an annual competition sponsored and hosted by Microsoft Corp. which brings together young technologists worldwide to help resolve some of the world's toughest challenges. The Imagine Cup comprises five major technology competitions, including Software Design, and four challenges (although the challenge number is updated annually).

Internet Problem Solving Contest
http://ipsc.ksp.sk/
Internet Problem Solving Contest is an online programming competition for teams of up to three people, conducted annually each May since 1999. It is organized by the students and faculty members of the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics, and Informatics of Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. The competition consists of a set of algorithmic problems that must be solved in a fixed amount of time.

Hewlett Packard (HP) Codewars
http://www.hpcodewars.org/
HP CodeWars, formerly Compaq CodeWars, is an annual programming competition held on the Hewlett-Packard campus in Houston, Texas, for area high schools. The first competition was held in 1998. In 2002, the name changed from Compaq CodeWars to HP CodeWars following Hewlett-Packard's acquisition of Compaq. In 2013, HP CodeWars events were also held at HP locations in Taipei, Taiwan and Roseville, California.

There are so many other popular programming contests that I have missed in this article. Let me know about them by commenting below. If you liked the article then don't forget to share it.