DigitalOcean Names Former VMware, Akamai Engineering Lead CTO

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Cloud computing platform DigitalOcean is following up news about its new Indian data center with another big announcement this month, hiring Julia Austin as chief technology officer.

According to DigitalOcean, Austin will lead product and engineering in her role at the company. Prior to DigitalOcean, Austin spent the last few years as an advisor and investor to early stage companies. She also teaches Product Management at Harvard Business School.

Previously, Austin worked at VMware for 8 years where she managed the expansion of the engineering organization, eventually serving as VP of Innovation at VMware. Prior to VMware Austin was VP of Engineering at Akamai.

DigitalOcean hired its first CTO in December 2014, bringing Google’s James Cariello on board to act in that capacity. His stint at DigitalOcean was a rather short one, ending after only 6 months, according to his LinkedIn. Cariello currently works at Google.

“There have been only two other times in my career when I’ve come across an opportunity with a company so exciting that it keeps me up at night,” Austin said. “What DigitalOcean has delivered in just a few short years is a true testament to where the company is headed, and I’m thrilled to be a part of the team as we bring robust and simple cloud infrastructure to market.”

“Julia’s experience leading engineering at both Akamai and VMware as well as many other tech startups will be invaluable to our organization,” Ben Uretsky, CEO and co-founder, DigitalOcean said in a statement. “We’re excited to welcome Julia to the team to drive our product roadmap and help DigitalOcean continue to be the cloud platform of choice for developers worldwide.”