Austin is a magnet for tech talent, and local universities continue to churn out ambitious new prospects. It also remains among the top ranked metros in terms of how far tech salaries go based on cost of living factors.
That means a lot of new executive hires — not to mention departures and layoffs. We track these movements of human capital in our daily newsletter, the Beat.
Below, we’ve listed the top Austin tech and startup hires we spotted in July.
Locally based payments company AffiniPay added two new leaders to its team. Christian Fadel, who was previously CFO of Hyperwallet (acquired by PayPal), will join as CFO. Greg Kattawar, previously a co-founder at Swivel and Spiceworks, will lead the engineering team. That follows last month’s news that AffiniPay had appointed Tom West as CEO.
Nano Global, an Austin-based molecular data company, added Ethernet co-inventor and 3Com founder Bob Metcalfe as a senior advisor for its platform architecture. He’ll work with Nano CEO Steve Papermaster and the company’s engineers to integrate clinical data that can be used to understand and forecast a person’s health — or health trends across populations.
Digital Pharmacist, an Austin pharmacy software startup that was recently acquired, named Dustin Humphreys as its new president. He previously held several digital and tech leadership positions at CVS, including a stint as general manager of CVS.com.
Favor, an Austin on-demand delivery startup that was acquired by H-E-B last year, announced two new execs. Steve Romney, co-founder and CTO of on-demand delivery startup Shutl (acquired by eBay), joins as VP of engineering. Lindsey Ducroz, who recently led design firm frog‘s HR, joins as VP of people operations.
CynergisTek, a publicly traded health care cybersecurity company based in Austin, announced Caleb Barlow as its new president and CEO. Barlow was most recently VP of threat intelligence at IBM Security. He replaces founder and CEO Mac McMillan, who is retiring but will help in the transition this year and remain a board member going forward.
OJO Labs, an Austin startup with an AI assistant to help prospective homebuyers, announced two big hires today. It added Chris Heller, former CEO of Austin-based Keller Williams, as its chief real estate officer. And it brought on Karen Starns, who led brand and customer experience for Amazon‘s Echo, Alexa, FireTV and Kindle divisions, as its chief marketing officer.
Lincoln, Neb.-based e-commerce startup Spreetail is laying off more than 100 employees, including 86 in Texas (mostly in Austin), the Lincoln Journal-Star reported. CEO Brett Thome told the newspaper that Spreetail is bringing its focus back to inventory and fulfillment centers after a push into direct e-commerce offerings. Its e-commerce site will remain, but with a smaller staff. The layoffs follow a June 2018 announcement that the company would hire 100 employees in Austin within about a year and move into a 21K-sq.-ft. space near 4th and Congress.
Cedar Park-based Firefly Aerospace hired Brad Schneider as its chief revenue officer. He was one of the first executives at Rocket Lab USA, and has years of leadership experience with Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
Slide UX, a UX design firm in Austin, announced six new hires, bringing total employee count to 20. Tom Drugan was named director of project delivery. Shandi Crooks became lead of content strategy and brand positioning. And Jordan Aslop was hired as operations analyst. Meanwhile, Jeff Schanzer, Andrew Penhollow and Heidi Santora are coming on as UX Designers.
Locally-based shipping logistics startup uShip named its CTO, Kris Lamb, as its new CEO. Prior to uShip, Lamb was vice president and general manager of cloud security at Austin-based Forcepoint. He replaces Mike Williams, who became CEO in 2017 and is leaving to pursue a yet unnamed leadership opportunity. Meanwhile, uShip promoted EVP of Operations Heather Hoover-Salomon to COO. She joined the uShip team back in 2005, a year after uShip was founded, as a PR and customer service intern.
Austin data management company FalconStor Software announced it appointed David Morris as VP of global product strategy and marketing. He was most recently working in container virtualization at AppOrbit in California, and has prior stops at EMC, VMware, Pillar Data and Huawei.
Austin VC firm Next Coast Ventures hired Jonathan Kaplan as its chief operating officer, a newly-created position. He was previously the chief legal officer and general counsel — and helped found a diversity and inclusion program — at RetailMeNot, an Austin digital discounts company that IPOed before being taken private in a $630M acquisition by Harland Clarke Holdings. Before that, Kaplan was an attorney DLA Piper and Latham & Watkins.
Growth Acceleration Partners, an Austin company that provides software and engineering services with teams in Colombia and Costa Rica, announced it has added Andrés Molina as VP of talent acquisition. He is the founder of Global Manager Consulting, a multicultural management consulting company.
