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Peter Wilson

Peter Wilson has worked at nearly every tech giant in Seattle, from Facebook to Google to Microsoft. So when we learned that he was leaving Facebook for a new gig, we naturally thought he’d end up at Amazon.com.

Well, that’s not the case. Wilson, as it turns out, is returning to his old stomping grounds at Google. Wilson had previously served as site director for Google’s Kirkland operations, leaving the company in 2009 to create a mobile startup that was eventually acquired by Facebook before it ever launched. In his new role, Wilson will be working on new advertising products, working with teams in Kirkland and London.

“Google has grown a lot in the last four years and they continue to invest in this community,” said Wilson, citing the company’s recent announcement to double the size of its Kirkland campus. “The important parts of the culture have remained intact, especially tackling big problems and building innovative solutions.”

Wilson first joined Google in 2005, joining the company from Microsoft shortly after the search titan arrived in the Seattle area.”I’m super excited to be returning to Google to work with smart people, build cool stuff and to help with Google’s growth in the Seattle area,” Wilson tells GeekWire.

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Brent Turner

—Former aQuantive executive Brent Turner has joined Code Fellows, the engineering training program founded by Andy Sack and Will Little. Turner, who is serving as president, previously worked as executive vice president of call products at Marchex. Prior to that, he had spent nearly 10 years in various roles at aQuantive and Razorfish.

In an email, Turner described Code Fellows as “a business that really, really matters.”

“As a leader of product and engineering teams for the past ten years, my single biggest headache was finding able, motivated, hard-working developers to build great products. My second-biggest headache was making sure that my developers were constantly updating their skills to take advantage of constantly-emerging technologies,” he said. “Code Fellows is in the position to powerfully impact both problems by creating more developer talent in the Seattle area and by helping existing area developers upgrade their skills.”

Code Fellows has a unique value proposition, promising entrants that they will be guaranteed a $60,000 job at a leading tech company in Seattle after completing the program. More on Code Fellows in our previous coverage: Bootcamp for engineers: Andy Sack unveils new digital trade school Code Fellows.

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Shalen Chhabra

—After successful runs at Swype and Clipboard, Shalendra Chhabra has joined Seattle area startup Indix as director of marketing. Chhabra said he had offers to move to the Bay Area, but decided to stick in Seattle to continue his own startup journey. “This was a natural continuation of my startup journey post Clipboard — acquired by Salesforce — and Swype — acquired by Nuance,” he says. Indix is currently operating in stealth mode, building a service to help product managers use big data analytics. Led by former Microsoft vice president Sanjay Parthasarathy, the company has raised about $6 million in venture funding from Avalon Ventures, Nexus Ventures and others.

—Gowalla co-founder Josh Williams and Instagram designer Tim Van Damme have left Facebook, departures that come more than a year after the mobile products were acquired.

Know of a notable tech industry hire? Email tips@geekwire.com. More Tech Moves here. Editor’s note: Peter Wilson’s daughter, Cecilia, is working as an intern at GeekWire this summer. 

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