— Swedish cloud communications platform Sinch named Vikram Khandpur, a 13-year Microsoft veteran, as chief product officer. He’ll be based in Seattle, where Sinch has a 20-person office and is hiring for product and engineering roles.
“The company has built an amazing network of communications services on top of hundreds of telcos worldwide, and has the right technology and assets in place to meet the rapidly rising demand for B2B and B2C customer engagement services,” Khandur said. “I could quickly see how I could add value in this opportunity, applying my experience with AI and layering on software to enhance the functionality of communications and collaboration platforms.”
Sinch, which employs 570 people globally, has many customers in the Seattle region and hopes to tap into the local tech talent. There are more than 130 engineering centers in the area set up by out-of-town tech companies. Sinch opened its Seattle office as a result of its acquisition of marketing startup Vehicle last year.
While at Microsoft, Khandpur led Skype and Microsoft Teams product management groups and previously held leadership positions at Nokia and Philips Consumer Electronics.
“It’s not every day that you get to hire someone with Vikram’s caliber and experience so we are exceptionally happy that he has chosen Sinch for his next career chapter,” Sinch CEO Oscar Werner said in a statement. “With Vikram’s leadership and vision, the market opportunity in front of us is considerably more meaningful.”
— Pawan Uppuluri joined Glossier as chief technology officer after 14 years at Amazon. Uppuluri led Alexa-related teams and was an Amazon Restaurants director. Her move follows a trend of Amazon employees leaving for leadership roles at other companies, as noted by the Wall Street Journal last week.
— Anne Toulouse, senior vice president of communications at Boeing, is retiring after 30 years with the company and serving on the company’s executive council. Toulouse’s announcement comes on the heels of other leadership changes in the months since the 737 MAX grounding.
—Ty Wolfe Jones is now director of user lifecycle at Assurance, the insurance startup acquired by Prudential earlier this year in one of the largest acquisitions in Seattle tech history. Prior to Assurance, Jones was COO at Wrench and previously held positions at DoorDash and Uber.
— Susan St. Ledger joined the board of directors at HashiCorp. St. Ledger, an executive at Splunk and previously Salesforce, is the first independent board member for the billion-dollar cloud company founded by two University of Washington computer science graduates.
— Tristan Rees joined Seattle-based women’s clothing rental service Armoire as head of engineering. Rees was most recently senior director of technology at Egencia, an Expedia company where he was responsible for leading the hotel product development teams and data science organization. At Armoire, Rees will be responsible for the growing startup’s technology and data platform.
“Technology and machine learning are at the forefront of providing our members with an effortless, personalized experience,” Armoire CEO and founder Ambika Singh said in a statement. “Tristan brings a proven track record of finding innovative solutions to complex issues.”
— Seattle cloud governance startup CoreStack hired Gans Subramaniam as chief revenue officer and Bala Vishwanath as chief marketing officer. Subramaniam was most recently a regional director at DataBrick and will be based in the Bay Area. Vishwanath is a marketing veteran and author with experience at various enterprise companies. Based in the Seattle area, he previously oversaw marketing and growth at SeekOut and Edifecs.
