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October 16, 2019

Big Data Career Notes: October 2019 Edition

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!


Jeffrey Hess

TIBCO has announced the appointment of Jeffrey Hess as its senior vice president of customer excellence. Hess has led teams at enterprise software companies including SAP and BMC Software – most recently, he served as senior vice president of worldwide pre-sales and customer experience at BMC Software.

“I’m thrilled to join TIBCO to build on the exceptional customer experiences its technology enables,” said Hess. “Our success is entirely built on the success and value achieved by our customers. Leaders in every vertical industry count on TIBCO to turn their data into innovation, and I look forward to leading our global organization to elevate our customers’ experiences to the next level.”

Syed Hoda

Crate.io has announced it has named Syed Hoda as its chief commercial officer and president, North America. Hoda most recently served as CMO of digital manufacturing platform company Sight Machine, and was previously CMO of ParStream, which was acquired by Cisco Systems, Inc.

“Digital transformation has created an abundance of opportunities for operational improvement, but most companies have been challenged in trying to capture the actual benefits. What have many realized? They have to get much, much better at putting their data to work,” said Hoda. “Crate.io was purpose-built for the machine data world and has helped many industry leaders achieve measurable results faster than any other data management provider. I am honored to be joining a fantastic team with a history of tremendous customer success.”

Kurt Muehmel

Dataiku has announced that Kurt Muehmel has been promoted to the newly created role of chief customer officer. Muehmel, who previously served as VP of sales engineering, will help existing and new client teams scale projects and teach their internal audiences. “Customer expectations and needs for data science and AI technologies are changing and growing rapidly,” said Muehmel. “I look forward to continuing to work alongside our customers as they dive deeper into their data science and machine learning journeys and ensure they have the best experience possible.”

Rowan Scranage

Alluxio has announced the appointment of Rowan Scranage as vice president, global sales and business development. Scranage joins Alluxio from Peltarion, a Swedish deep learning company, where he was chief revenue officer. Previously, he was vice president and general manager for Couchbase.

“I am excited to join Alluxio, a company that is at the intersection of cloud, AI, and open source with a platform that uniquely addresses the challenges that have come out of decoupled architectures in today’s modern workloads,” said Scranage. “I am looking forward to sharing my experiences and tapping into my open source and AI background to continue to drive Alluxio’s growth on a global scale, working with partners and customers as they identify new, innovative use cases for leveraging data across frameworks, clouds, and storage.”

Fred Studer

TIBCO has also announced the appointment of Fred Studer as its new chief marketing officer. Studer previously served as the chief marketing officer of FinancialForce, in addition to positions at Gigamon, NetSuite, Microsoft and Oracle, among others. He is a board member of the University of Colorado Leeds School of Business.

“There are very few times in your career when the stars align: the market opportunity, leading products that deliver real value, amazing customers that want to share their unrivaled experience, and an incredible team of people who are ready to take it all to the next level,” said Studer. “TIBCO is all of the above and I could not be more excited to join this team and company to do my best work ever!”

Joy Walters Sybesma

Dataiku has also announced that Joy Sybesma will be its new chief people officer. In this role, she will lead global recruitment, professional development and scaling company culture. Previously, Sybesma served as chief people and cultural officer for Kargo and held human resources roles at News America Marketing and Macy’s.

“It’s an exciting time to join Dataiku,” said Sybesma. “The passion and talent of the team are inspiring, and I look forward to being a champion for the people who power Dataiku as we work to advance the world of data science. From working with the world’s leading companies to advance enterprise AI to promoting global sustainability efforts through innovative programs such as Ikig.Ai, Dataikuer’s are passionate about democratizing data and helping the world which makes this a unique team in the space.”

Peter Wang

Anaconda has announced that Peter Wang, co-founder and former president of Anaconda, will now serve as its CEO. Prior to co-founding Anaconda, Wang founded two other analytics companies: Continuum Analytics and Streamitive. 

“I’m excited to lead the company as we continue evolving our enterprise platform, innovating new solutions for the market, and investing in core aspects of our distribution and package repository,” Wang wrote. “I’m also committed to engaging deeply with the open-source community. Anaconda will continue to set an example of how commercial companies can play well with the community ethos.”


To read last month’s edition of Career Notes, click 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.

Datanami