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Before yesterdayTech

Tech Moves: Former Amazon exec joins F5; Microsoft security CVP departs; Qualtrics adds leadership

16 July 2026 at 13:01
Cathy Peterman. (F5 Photo)

β€” F5 named former Amazon executive Cathy Peterman as executive vice president and chief people officer of the Seattle-based application-delivery and security company. In May, F5 celebrated its 30th year in business.

β€œCathy brings a rare combination of strategic depth and genuine humanity that will raise the bar for how we invest in our people,” said CEO FranΓ§ois Locoh-Donou in a statement. β€œShe and I share a reverence for culture and its impact on driving sustained results.”

Peterman joins F5 from Wayfair, where she served as CPO for the retail company’s technology organization. Prior to that, she was with Amazon for more than five years, departing as the HR executive for advertising products and technology.

Rudra Mitra. (LinkedIn Photo)

β€” After more than 27 years at Microsoft, Rudra Mitra has announced his departure. He leaves the role of corporate vice president and head of Microsoft Security Purview, a team addressing data security and governance focused on artificial intelligence and AI agents.

Mitra joined the Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant straight out of college as a software engineer. He has led work on products including Office, Windows Live and Microsoft 365 Cloud Infrastructure.

β€œMicrosoft is a very special place full of incredibly talented people, and this decision comes with gratitude, happiness, and optimism for the future,” he said on LinkedIn. Mitra did not share his next move, saying only that there is β€œmore on that soon.”

Markham McIntyre. (LinkedIn Photo)

β€” Markham McIntyre, who previously led Seattle’s Office of Economic Development, is now executive director of Climate Surge, which is described as a β€œproject built to accelerate the deployment of climate policies and market solutions in Washington.”

The effort works with corporations, heavy industry, government, developers, advocates, and philanthropy, and is a partnership between Earth Finance, Climate Solutions and Stolte Foundation.

Prior to his role with the city of Seattle, McIntyre was at the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber for more than eight years, leaving in 2022 as executive vice president.

β€” Qualtrics, an experience management technology company with headquarters in Seattle and Provo, Utah, announced a slate of new hires, all of whom appear to be working remotely:

  • Adam Block was named chief sales officer, joining from Motive where he was chief revenue officer.
  • Ken Coleman was named senior vice president of marketing, coming from Ramsey Solutions.
  • Khoi Hoang was named leader of the global sales engineering organization, joining from Salesforce.
  • Aaron Ellis was named leader of corporate sales, joining from Workday.

Qualtrics previously shared news that it promoted Ken Hoang to senior vice president of product.

β€” Jay Shankar, Amazon’s former vice president of global talent acquisition, has joined Uber in a comparable role. Shankar, who is based in San Francisco, resigned from Amazon in December. Past employers include Adobe and BMC Software.

β€œWhen I joined AWS almost 8 years ago to lead recruiting, I had never run a talent acquisition organization. What I discovered was a team of builders who showed me that this work is fundamentally about investing in people and obsessing over customer needs,” Shankar said on LinkedIn.

β€” Jamie Boyd has joined the advisory board for Seattle’s GemaTEG, a startup building technology to manage the heat produced by computer chips. Boyd is a founder of Cypress Capital Holdings and previously helped build Cascadia, an investment banking franchise focused on energy and climate technologies.

β€” Seattle immigration tech startup Casium named Kat Kelley as its founding go-to-market lead.Β Kelley joins from Teaching Strategies, a digital education company, and past employers include Rectxt and brightwheel.

β€” Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a firm that specializes in corporate and technology-focused legal work, announced that Ty Kayam has joined as counsel in Seattle, expanding the firm’s healthcare regulatory team.

β€” Rogo named Joe Xavier as chief technology officer of the New York-based finance platform. Early in his career, Xavier held leadership roles at Amazon and Microsoft, and more recently served as Grammarly’s CTO. At Rogo, he will help establish a San Francisco office.

β€” And in case you missed it: Dave Brown, senior vice president of Amazon Web Services leading its compute, AI and machine learning operations, is leaving after nearly 19 years.Β He is departing at the end of this month, and Amazon exec Dave Treadwell will take over the group. Read more in this GeekWire story.

Tech Moves: Remitly CMO departs; Temporal names EVP; Veeam and Qualtrics leadership changes

13 July 2026 at 13:17
Rina Hahn. (LinkedIn Photo)

β€” Rina Hahn has left Seattle’s Remitly as chief marketing officer. Hahn joined the remittance company in 2018 as director of digital marketing and rose to CMO after four years. Before joining Remitly, she was an executive at Blue Nile and Big Fish Games.

The publicly traded company helps customers in more than 170 countries send money internationally.

β€œI’ve seen firsthand the deep love this company has for its customers and the impact that purpose-driven work can have on immigrants and their families around the world,” she said on LinkedIn. Hahn, who is based in London, did not share her next move. Remitly co-founder Matt Oppenheimer stepped down as CEO in February.

Preeti Somal. (LinkedIn Photo)

β€” Temporal announced that Preeti Somal has been promoted to executive vice president in a role that will oversee the company’s engineering, product and design operations, which were recently reorganized under a single leader.

The industry is moving so fast that β€œwe can’t afford any distance between the people who decide what to build and the people who build it. Unifying these functions closes that loop,” said CEO Samar Abbas on LinkedIn.

Somal has been with Temporal for three years, joining from HashiCorp where she held EVP roles.

The Seattle-area software company offers a platform for running complex computer workflows more reliably. In February, the business closed a $300 million round that pushed its valuation to $5 billion. Temporal is No. 2 on the GeekWire 200Β is a ranked index of the Pacific Northwest’s top startups.

Michelle Graff. (LinkedIn Photo)

β€” Veeam Software, a Seattle-based data protection and ransomware recovery company, appointed Michelle Graff as senior vice president of global partners and channel. She joins from the cybersecurity company Commvault and is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

β€œThe future belongs to organizations that can transform trusted data into trusted AI with resilience built in from the start,” Graff said on LinkedIn.

Graff’s hiring is the latest in a string of leadership changes at Veeam, which has made five other executive hires or promotions this year.

Ken Hoang. (LinkedIn Photo)

β€” Qualtrics, an experience management technology company with headquarters in Seattle and Provo, Utah, has promoted Ken Hoang to senior vice president of product. Hoang is based in San Mateo, Calif., and will work remotely. He was previously a VP at Apptio in Bellevue, Wash.

Qualtrics had a big leadership shakeup in April, when five executives were let go in what CEO Jason Maynard described as an effort to β€œsimplify our structure and ensure we are positioned for our next phase of growth.” Two product executives were among those who left, and Hoang joined the company around that time.

Qualtrics, which employs more than 4,500 people globally, makes software that helps companies gather and act on feedback from customers, employees and others through surveys, AI-powered analytics and other tools.

β€” Monica Lazo is now the sales director for Loopr AI, a Seattle startup that sells computer vision quality control software to manufacturing firms. She joins from Neurala, an AI platform automating visual inspections that is based in Boston.

β€” Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has named atmospheric scientist Larry Berg as the director of the Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement User Facility.

And some departures from Big Tech:

  • Mary Birkner is retiring from Microsoft after 21 years, primarily in leadership with Xbox. β€œI thank you for the laughter and goodness that were part of the journey to all the big work stuff,” she said on LinkedIn.
  • Steve Andrews has closed out a 32-year career that included more than 11 years across two stints at Amazon, most recently as senior principal technical program manager. The TPM role β€œis often misunderstood and misused, so I dedicated a substantial amount of effort helping to set TPMs, their managers, and their teams up for success across the company,” he said. β€œI hope it made a difference.”
  • Jeff Nienaber is departing Microsoft after more than 16 years, leaving the role of senior director and principal PM for the office of the CTO. β€œI’m really excited to see what tomorrow’s sunrise has in store,” Nienaber said.

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