Salesforce offices in Seattleβs Fremont neighborhood. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
Salesforce is cutting 59 jobs in Washington state, impacting a wide variety of tech roles at offices in Seattle and Bellevue, according to a new state filing.
The layoffs at the San Francisco-based enterprise software giant, as well as data visualization company Tableau, are effective Oct. 5 according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification from the stateβs Employment Security Department.
Affected positions include software engineers, product management directors, incident commanders, technical support engineers, and leadership roles across marketing and sustainability.
GeekWire reached out to Salesforce for comment on the reason behind the layoffs and for updated workforce numbers in the Seattle area. Weβll update this story when we hear back.
Last September, 93 employees in Washington state were laid off by Salesforce. At the same time, CEO Marc Benioff was touting efficiency gains at the company achieved through the use of AI tools.
The latest reductions come amid a broader restructuring at Salesforce, marking its third round of job cuts this year. The San Francisco Business Times reported that 74 employees are being laid off at the companyβs headquarters, accompanied by a reshuffle in the C-suite that promoted Miguel Milano to COO.
Amid the restructuring, the company continues to pull in top regional leadership. Longtime Microsoft cybersecurity executiveΒ Krishna Kumar ParthasarathyΒ announcedΒ last week that heβs joining Salesforce as executive vice president of engineering.
Salesforce acquired Seattle-based Tableau in 2019 for $15.7 billion. Despite the recurring job reductions, the company recently renewed its lease for roughly 114,000 square feet at the Data 1 office building in Seattleβs Fremont neighborhood, signaling an ongoing commitment to its long-term home in the city.
In other tech industry layoffs this week, Google announced it was eliminating 52 jobs in Washington and Zillow is cutting 91 jobs.
β Teri Hatfield was named chief revenue officer for Iterable, a customer engagement platform. The Seattle-area tech executive most recently served as executive vice president of sales and solutions at Salesforce and CRO of Tableau, which Salesforce acquired in 2019. She joined Tableau in 2012 and spent more than a decade in sales leadership roles at Verizon earlier in her career.
βIβve come to believe that great customer relationships donβt start with technology. They start with understanding your customers,β Hatfield said on LinkedIn. βIterable stood out because itβs built around that belief.β
Hatfield will work remotely for Iterable, which is based in San Francisco.
Ken Miller. (Arnold & Porter Photo)
β Seattle-area attorney Ken Miller has joined Arnold & Porter as a partner in the life sciences and technology transactions teams within the law firmβs corporate and finance group.
Miller began his legal career at Perkins Coie, where he spent 16 years focused on tech companies and nonprofit organizations.
In 2015, he moved to the Gates Foundation as associate general counsel, briefly serving as lead counsel for the Gates Medical Research Institute before returning to the foundation as director of legal. In that role, he led work tied to the Global Health Division, the research institute, and business development and licensing, privacy and AI.
Ben Reed. (LinkedIn Photo)
β Ben Reed is now chief marketing officer for AIM Intelligent Machines (AIM), a Seattle-area startup developing software that lets bulldozers and excavators operate on their own.
Reed previously ran a firm offering AI marketing and go-to-market advisory services. Other past roles include CMO for Sanctuary AI and a decade at Microsoft, where he departed as head of strategic storytelling for the companyβs digital transformation platform.
βIβve spent much of my career helping frontier technologies become understandable, credible, and consequential, from Microsoft Surface and HoloLens to physical AI, humanoids, and robotics. At AIM, the unusual opportunity is that the technology, customers, deployments, and proof already exist,β Reed said on LinkedIn.
Philip Wong. (Gravitics Photo)
β Aerospace startup Gravitics named Philip Wong chief financial officer. The Marysville, Wash.-based company designs and manufactures modular space infrastructure such as commercial space station modules, cargo-carrying spacecraft and orbital carriers. Its customers include U.S. Space Force and Axiom Space. On Tuesday, Gravitics announced a partnership with Lockheed Martin on a Department of War contract.
Wong joins Gravitics from Viasat, a communications company providing satellite internet services, where he led financial strategy and investment planning. He previously held leadership roles at Pure Storage and Seagate Technology and is based in California.
βPhilip has spent 30 years deploying capital across satellite, network, and space infrastructure β¦ He knows how to translate real engineering programs into the financial strategy that supports them,β said Colin Doughan, co-founder and CEO of Gravitics, in a statement.
β Ian Fliflet, former chief growth officer at Seattle online sales platform OfferUp, is sharing his insights on Intro, a service that provides video chats with experts from wide-ranging backgrounds.
β Katy Brown, president of Microsoftβs Americas Markets & Industries organization, was named to Avanadeβs board of directors. Brown has been with the tech giant for nearly 30 years and is past president and board chair of the Professional Businesswomen of California. She also serves as executive sponsor of the Bay Area Women at Microsoft group.
β Ben Minicucci, CEO and president of Alaska Air Group, has joinedLyftβs board of directors. Minicucci has spent more than two decades with the airline, which is the parent company of Alaska Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines and Horizon Air.
β Seattle tech leader Ash Wahiwas appointed to MoPOPβs board of directors. Wahi is the founder and CEO of Revenaut, a startup building an AI marketing tool. His career includes leadership roles in product and advertising at Microsoft, Snap and Meta.
β TiE Seattle, a nonprofit supporting entrepreneurship, named five new members to its board of directors:
Joseph Sirosh, CEO of CreatorsAG and former executive at Amazon and Microsoft. He also serves on the board for the biotech company AbSci.
Monika Panpaliya, partner director of product management at Microsoft and former leader at JPMorgan Chase & Co., Boeing and T-Mobile.
Vamshi Reddy, CEO of Quadrant Technologies, founder of Seattle Venture Capital, and past leader at Lenora Systems and Microsoft.
Prasad Anguluri, co-founder of the social media platform Haply, which connects neighbors. Anguluri also serves as a Bothell City Council member, president of ANG Technologies, and co-founder of Innovative Investing Group.
Sanjay Puri, who was previously a vice president with Icertis and a former leader at Avalara, 9Mile Labs, Edifecs and others.
β JT McCrone, a Fred Hutch Cancer Center genomic epidemiologist, was named leader of Nextstrain, an open-source project that tracks the evolution and spread of viral and bacterial pathogens in real time.
The effort is primarily based in Seattle at Fred Hutch and two institutions in Basel, Switzerland. It has received $1.5 million from the Gates Foundation to support its next phase, which aims to make analyses of viral evolution more accessible and scalable.
β Graham Littlehaleis now an investing partner with venture firm Felicis. He previously served as vice president of Point72 Ventures.