David Aronchick

It’s there and back again for Seattle tech veteran David Aronchick, who is returning to Microsoft after more than a decade.

Aronchick is taking on the intriguing title of head of open source machine learning strategy — a role that likely didn’t even exist when the Dartmouth grad first worked at the software giant in various project management roles from 2001 to 2007.

Aronchick also is well known in Seattle startup circles, previously founding audio clip website Hark and working at venture-backed Chef. He also worked at Amazon, and spent the past three years leading project management on Google’s Kubernetes Engine where he co-founded Kubeflow. He’s now bringing that cloud knowledge to Microsoft Azure, which is undergoing a resurgence through the leadership of Microsoft executives Scott Guthrie and Satya Nadella.

Aronchick made it clear he’s not abandoning the Kubernetes community entirely in a Twitter thread:

We’ve reached out to Aronchick for more details about his new gig, and we’ll update this post when we hear more.

Kevin Riegelsberger. (Photo via Tango Card)

—Fast-growing Tango Card — fresh off a $35 million venture round that it’s using to modernize how companies send digital rewards — appointed Kevin Riegelsberger to its board of directors as an independent member.

Riegelsberger brings an entrepreneurial background to the board as the former president of tax automation startup Avalara and founder of management software company Epicor.

Riegelsberger retired from Avalara in 2016, but returned to the Seattle company in December 2017 as interim head of engineering and development as he brought on a full-time replacement. Riegelsberger spent six years at Avalara, where he served as president, head of operations and head of the strategic initiatives group.

“I was attracted to Tango Card because of the innovative, leading platform the company has built, the tremendous market opportunity in the B2B digital incentive industry, and the vision and high-quality execution capabilities of the Tango Card team,” Riegelsberger said in a statement.

Alberto Sutton. (Photo courtesy of Suplari)

Suplari has a new head of marketing in Alberto Sutton, the former marketing executive at government business intelligence firm Onvia.

“There were multiple factors attracting me to join Suplari: The great opportunity to lead the way of AI and Machine Learning in enterprise procurement; the great people, leaders and entrepreneurs I met in the company; and the high caliber of customers already using Suplari — and loving their experience and results,” Sutton told GeekWire via email.

Suplari — led by Jeff Gerber, Brian White and Nikesh Parekh — raised $10.3 million from Two Sigma Ventures, Workday, Madrona and others in April to expand its AI platform for software procurement. Prior to Onvia, Sutton held marketing roles at Pyramid Analytics and Nintex, and worked on Sharepoint at Microsoft before that.

Suplari also announced that Achim Bassler joined as VP of customer success, and Chad Baker is now VP of engineering. Bassler previously worked at Deloitte Digital and served as vice president of software development and delivery services at Ubermind, the digital agency he co-founded. Baker previously held senior development roles at OpenMarket, Expedia, Amazon and Andersen Consulting/Accenture.

Oracle continues to gobble up talent in Seattle at a rapid pace, as it expands operations in cloud city and ramps up competition with Amazon and Microsoft. The latest addition is Brant Williams, who joined the Oracle cloud infrastructure team last month, according to his LinkedIn profile. Williams started in enterprise sales at RealNetworks, before moving into business development at Amazon. A startup leader, he created Tenacious Offense, which later sold to Atlas Accelerator, where he served as chief revenue officer of the startup investor.

Editor’s note: Check out previous Tech Moves columns here

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