Big Data Career Notes (Aug. 2016)

In this monthly feature, we’ll keep you up-to-date on the latest career developments for individuals in the big data community. Whether it’s a promotion, new company hire, or even an accolade, we’ve got the details. Check in each month for an updated list and you may even come across someone you know, or better yet, yourself!

Ashfaq Munshi

Ashfaq Munshi has been named the new CEO of Pepperdata. He has been the CEO of several successful startup companies and also served as the CTO at Yahoo. Sean Suchter, co-founder and former CEO of Pepperdata, will take over as Pepperdata’s CTO.

“Ten years ago Sean was one of the first people to understand the transformative power of Hadoop for businesses, while it was being invented at Yahoo,” said Munshi. “Pepperdata was born out of this experience and in just a few years the company has become the leader in distributed computing performance.”

Bob Bies

Bob Bies is now the CFO at Syncsort. He most recently worked for Cannondale Investments as CFO but was also a founding partner and investor. Bies has over 20 years of experience in CFO roles.

“I am thrilled to join Syncsort at such an exciting time in its history. Syncsort’s innovative Big Iron to Big Data software is leading the industry in addressing increasingly complex requirements for delivering critical mainframe data to next-generation Big Data environments,” said Bies. “I look forward to leveraging my financial and M&A experience to support Syncsort’s efforts to accelerate its burgeoning business.”

Patrick Booth

Talend has hired Patrick Booth as the new vice president of sales for the United Kingdom and Ireland. He has over 20 years of sales experience and most recently worked for Oracle as the director of technology software sales for the United Kingdom and Ireland.

“There is a significant shift happening right now in the market. I am increasingly seeing organizations adopt the new wave of agile, innovative, and open source based solutions, which is clearly what Talend is delivering for the big data market,” said Booth. “I am thrilled to be joining Talend at such a pivotal time, where we can translate our expertise and understanding of the end-to-end data journey into a competitive edge for our customers.”

Marc Brown and Tom Schodorf

Brown

Rapid7 has appointed Marc Brown and Tom Schodorf to its Board of Directors. Brown is currently the managing director of corporate development at Microsoft and has about 22 years of business and legal experience. Schodorf previously served as the senior vice president of field operations at Splunk and has more than 30 years of software experience.

Schodorf

“Marc and Tom bring expertise in business development, operations, and go-to-market strategy. They are terrific additions to our board and support our continued success in addressing the tremendous opportunities in cyber security and IT,” said Corey Thomas, CEO and president of Rapid7. “We’re excited to have their leadership on our board as Rapid7 continues innovating with our unique security data and analytics technology platform.”

Jason Tokayer

Jason Tokayer has been named the data engineering manager at Capital One. He’s been with the company for a little over one year now and served as principal engineer before his new appointment. Prior to joining Capital One in 2015, Tokayer worked at Northrop Grumman. He has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California.

Steve Hamby

Cambridge Semantics has named Steve Hamby Managing Director Government. In this new position, he will use big data discovery, analysis, and data management solutions to serve federal government customers. He was recently the CEO of G Software and prior to that was the CTO at Orbis Technologies. In 2013, Hamby was named Technology Executive of the Year by the American Business Awards.

“We are delighted to have Steve join us as Managing Director Government,” said Alok Prasad, president of Cambridge Semantics. “With our rapidly expanding client roster in the public space, Steve’s addition to the team will permit us to further develop our market presence as big data analysis becomes indispensable to delivering effective and efficient government services.”

Lars Farnstrom

Lars Farnstrom has joined GoodData as the company’s first sales director for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. He joins GoodData from InsideSales.com where he held the same position. He has over 20 years of experience in the software sector, particularly with SaaS and enterprise software.

“Enterprise data monetization is a very hot topic in Europe right now, and there’s a real market need for robust, proven solutions to support it,” Farnstrom said. “GoodData not only has EU-ready servers and services, but now we have actual sales boots on the ground and I’m thrilled to be a part of the team!”

Skip Potter 

According to Barb Darrow at Fortune, Skip Potter will be joining Nike as the company’s new CTO. Potter has spent a number of years at Capital One, initially as the vice president of technology innovation, and then as the managing vice president of engineering. Fortune stated that sources have confirmed the news, however, neither Nike nor Capital One have made any comments at this point.

You can find Darrow’s article here.

Do you know someone that should be included in next month’s list? If so, send us an email at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.