Sep 30, 2024

(metamorworks/Shutterstock) 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! Ketan Karkhanis ThoughtSpot has appointed Ketan Karkhanis to be the company’s new CEO, filling a position that has remained vacant since the previous CEO, Sudheesh Nair, stepped down in March . Karkhanis is a tech veteran who joins the business intelligence and analytics firm from Salesforce, where he spent over a decade as a manager and executive during two non-consecutive stints, including as EVP and GM of Sales Cloud from April 2022 to September 2024. Ketan Karkhanis “During this time of accelerated transformation driven by the advent of generative AI, there is no better person to lead ThoughtSpot than Ketan,” said Ajeet Singh, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of ThoughtSpot. “He is a customer-obsessed, employee-focused business leader with a deep experience in analytics and has built and led world-class SaaS businesses of significant scale.” Karkhanis, who has a Bachelor’s in Computer Science from PICT (Pune Institute of Computer Technology, India) and an MBA from Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business, says he is excited to join ThoughtSpot, which he says takes “a fundamentally different approach to analytics.” “ThoughtSpot has a significant head start in innovation that is required for truly delivering on the expectations that genAI has created, with a proven solution that is delivering value to some of the largest and most complex enterprises in the world,” Karkhanis said. “I am extremely honored to have the opportunity to lead the company that finds itself intersecting with the genAI tailwinds at a perfect time, and is in a strong position to capitalize on this market opportunity by bringing unparalleled value to over a thousand customers across the globe.” Luis Ceze Luis Ceze Luis Ceze, the co-founder and CEO of OctoAI and a BigDATAwire Person to Watch for 2024 , has joined GPU giant Nvidia as VP of AI systems. Ceze, who also is a co-creator of Apache TVM and a professor at the University of Washington, announced his new position following the acquisition of the five-year-old OctoAI by Nvidia for a reported $165 million earlier this month. “I’m very excited to share that I’m joining NVIDIA,” Ceze wrote in a LinkedIn post . “Building OctoAI (now NVIDIA) has been a fantastic journey going from pioneering research on ML compilers at the University of Washington, to driving Apache TVM adoption to building products valued by customers in a fast moving industry.” Josh Harbert Josh Harbert NoSQL database vendor Couchbase announced the appointment of Josh Harbert as the company’s new chief marketing officer this month. Harbert brings over 20 years of marketing experience, and was most recently the CMO at Delphix. Previously, he held senior marketing roles at Tanium, Qumulo and Apptio, where he played a key role in Apptio’s journey from early stage to IPO and a $2B acquisition. Couchbase made the hiring announcement as part of its second quarter financial results. The company recorded $51.6 million in revenue, a 20% increase compared to the same period last year. The company’s loss narrowed from $21.9 million to $21.0 million. “I’m pleased with our hard work and execution in the quarter,” said Couchbase CEO Matt Cain. “We delivered revenue and operating loss results that exceeded the high end of our outlook, generated strong new business and new logos, and saw a meaningful increase in our Capella mix.” Ravi Mayurum Ravi Mayurum Ravi Mayurum last month was hired as the CTO and EVP of engineering at Uniphore , which develops a multimodal AI and data platform designed to unify all elements of voice, video, text, and data. Most recently, Mayuram was the chief development officer at Luminary Cloud, where he led products, design and engineering. Prior to that, he was the CTO at Couchbase, where he led development for a decade. He also had stops at BEA, HP, Informix, Oracle, and Siebel Systems. “I am honored to join Uniphore at such a pivotal time in the company’s journey,” Mayurum said. “Uniphore’s culture of AI innovation is unlike any other in the industry with technology that is tried, tested and trusted by the biggest companies. I am eager to work with this talented team of world-class engineers and leaders to further advance Uniphore’s technology and deliver even greater value to customers.” Ty Cobb Ty Cobb Security software vendor Exabeam last week announced that it has appointed Ty Cobb to be its new vice president of sales for the Americas region. Cobb brings more than 20 years of experience to the SIEM vendor, including stops at Veracode, CA Technologies, and IBM. “Joining Exabeam at a time of strong momentum is a tremendous opportunity,” Cobb said. “I look forward to working closely with customers to help them unlock the full potential of our self-hosted and cloud-native SIEM and advanced behavioral analytics products as they mature their security operations.” John Hinshaw John Hinshaw Distributed relational database vendor SingleStore (formerly MemSQL) has appointed John Hinshaw to sit on its board of directors. Hinshaw has more than three decades of experience in tech, and has served on the boards of several major companies, including Sysco, DocuSign, Illumio, and Bank of New York Mellon. “With its speed, scale and simplicity, SingleStore is changing the game for complex transactional and analytical work while also offering enormous benefits for generative AI applications,” Hinshaw said. “Having worked with Raj for more than a decade, I’m happy to partner with him and his management team on the next evolution of SingleStore’s growth.” To read last month’s edition of Career Notes, click here .