DigitalOcean, the developer’s cloud computing platform, announced the hiring of Julia Austin as its chief technology officer. As CTO, Austin will lead product and engineering for one of the fastest growing cloud computing platforms, driving innovation to grow DigitalOcean’s simple, on-demand offering for over 700,000 registered customers.
“Julia’s experience leading engineering at both Akamai and VMware as well as many other tech startups will be invaluable to our organization,” said Ben Uretsky, CEO and Co-Founder, DigitalOcean. “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.”
Austin takes the CTO role at DigitalOcean after spending the last few years as an advisor and investor to early stage companies, and as a faculty member of Harvard Business School’s Entrepreneurial Management Unit where she teaches Product Management. She was previously with VMware for eight years, where she managed the expansion of the engineering organization; from launching their first non-CA-based engineering site in Cambridge, MA, to leading all of VMware’s Global R&D initiatives and eventually serving as vice president of Innovation at VMware. Prior to VMware, Julia was the VP of Engineering at Akamai. She has successfully led large organizations in technical positions, partnered with entrepreneurs to help start and scale technology companies, and serves as a board member, advisor and angel investor who provides leadership coaching with a focus on engineering, process, staffing and functional operations.
“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,” said Austin. “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.”