Vlad Tenev was born in Varna, Bulgaria, and moved to the U.S. as a child. He attended Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. He earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Stanford University, where he met Baiju Bhatt. Tenev later obtained a master's degree in mathematics from UCLA in 2008, initially planning to pursue a PhD before dropping out to work with Bhatt.
In 2010, Tenev and Bhatt co-founded Celeris, a high-frequency trading software company.