(metamorworks/Shutterstock)
It’s that time of month again–time for Big Data Career Notes, a monthly feature where we keep you up-to-date on the latest career developments for individuals in the big data community. Whether it’s a promotion, new company hire, or even an accolade, we’ve got the details. Check in each month for an updated list and you may even come across someone you know, or better yet, yourself!
Tom Siebel
Tom Siebel
Tom Siebel, the CEO, chairman, and founder of C3.ai, has instructed the company’s board to begin looking for a successor to Siebel as head of the publicly traded company following his diagnoses with an illness.
“After being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease in early 2025, I have experienced significant visual impairment,” Siebel stated. “For C3 AI to reach its full potential–which I believe is spectacular–the board and I have initiated a search for a new CEO who can take the company to the next level of growth and success. I will remain fully engaged as Chief Executive Officer of C3.ai until such time as the C3.ai board appoints my successor after which I will continue in the role of Executive Chairman focusing on strategy, product innovation, strategic partner and customer relationships.”
Siebel, who is credited with spearheading the market for customer relationship management software with his founding of Siebel Systems in 1993, founded C3 in 2009 to take advantage of the shift to AI. Siebel agreed to sell his CRM company to Oracle in 2005 for $5.85 billion.
Christopher Manning
Christopher Manning
Christopher Manning, renowned Stanford AI Lab Director and one of the world’s most cited NLP researchers, has joined AIX Ventures as a general partner, a position that will allow him to help guide the venture capital firm with its AI investments.
Manning has spent more than 25 years at Stanford University, where he is currently on a leave of absence. He founded the Stanford NLP Group, led the Stanford AI Lab (SAIL) and co-founded Stanford’s Institute for Human‑Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). He was elected both to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the National Academy of Engineering this year.
“We’re entering a new era where deep AI systems will fundamentally reshape how we interact with technology and knowledge,” Manning stated. “Joining AIX Ventures as a General Partner allows me to support the next generation of founders building the tools and infrastructure that will define that future.”
Matt DeBergalis
Matt DeBergalis
Apollo, the company behind GraphQL, has promoted Co-founder Matt DeBergalis from the CTO role to be its new CEO. DeBergalis will replace outgoing CEO, Apollo Co-founder Geoff Schmidt, who was the creator of GraphQL Federation (along with Martijn Walraven). Schmidt will remain with the company and shift to a technology focused role.
“As I’ve shared in my writing and talks over the years, I’ve been obsessed with getting GraphQL into the hands of every developer who’s wrestling with API complexity,” DeBergalis wrote in a blog post. “Now as CEO, I get to focus entirely on accelerating that mission. The infrastructure we’ve built is handling billions of requests daily for companies whose products you use every day. Now we’re ready to scale that impact.
Scott Strubel
Scott Strubel
Smartsheet, the AI-powered work management platform, has promoted Scott Strubel as the company’s new head of Americas partnerships to help shape the next generation of its partner program throughout Canada, the United States, and Latin America. Most recently, he served as a vice president with Darktrace, a British cybersecurity firm.
Strubel will be called on to play a key role in expanding the company’s reach throughout the Americas region with his deep understanding of building successful relationships with partners, including distributors and resellers, system integrators, ISVs, OEMs and MSPs.
Previously, Strubel led global commercial sales for Hitachi Vantara, global sales for NetApp software and US sales for HP software. He has also led the global partner organization for Commvault.
Jake Bengtson
Jake Bengston
Striim has hired Jake Bengtson to be its vice president of AI solutions. Bengston has more than a decade of experience in the enterprise AI business, with stops at ExxonMobil, Farmers Edge, and Brevium. He joins the streaming data company from Cloudera, where he helped developed the company’s strategy for AI, machine learning, and trusted AI solutions.
In his new role, Bengston will be called on to help build strategic depth, provide industry and customer alignment, drive AI application innovation, and promote market leadership, Striim says.
“Striim is already doing what most companies are still trying to figure out–delivering real-time, trustworthy data at scale,” Bengtson stated. “Joining a team that’s not just talking about AI readiness, but enabling it every day, is what made this an easy decision. I’m excited to help push the boundaries even further.”
Chris Niederman
Chris Niederman
Chris Niederman has been hired as senior vice president of alliances and channels at Snowflake, a position that will put him in charge of an ecosystem consisting of more than 12,000 global partners, including leading cloud providers, technology innovators, and system integrators.
Niederman joins Snowflake with more than 30 years of technology experience of building and scaling partnership organizations, including 11 years at AWS, where he was the managing director of the AWS Industries and Solutions team. Niederman has also held partner sales positions at VMware.
“Throughout my career, I’ve seen how a thriving partner ecosystem and partner-led growth directly impact customer success,” said Niederman. “Snowflake’s partners are at the forefront of innovation, extending the power of the AI Data Cloud and enabling our joint customers to unlock maximum value from their data and drive business outcomes. I look forward to getting to work, meeting our partners and customers in the field, and deepening these critical relationships to accelerate our joint successes.”
Matt Parson
Matt Parson
Matt Parson has joined analytic vendor SAS as executive vice president and chief financial officer. Parson succeeds long-time CFO David Davis, who is retiring after nearly 40 years of service at SAS.
As CFO, Parson will lead SAS’ global financial strategy, including forecasting, planning, capital management and investor engagement. He will also help shape operational priorities that support scalable growth, market expansion and long-term value creation.
“I’m honored to join SAS as it builds momentum for the future,” said Parson. “The company’s reputation for innovation and customer impact is well-earned, and I look forward to partnering with the leadership team to build on that momentum and support the next phase of growth.”
Kevin Egan
Kevin Egan (right) with ClickHouse CEO Aaron Katz (left)
Industry veteran Kevin Egan has joined real-time analytics database provider ClickHouse as its new chief revenue officer. Egan joins ClickHouse with over two decades of experience building and leading enterprise sales organizations at Atlassian, Slack, Dropbox, and Salesforce, and will be tasked with driving revenue at the firm, which raised a $350 million Series C in May 2025 that valued the company at $6.35 billion.
“I’m incredibly excited to join ClickHouse at such a pivotal time,” said Egan. “As organizations navigate how to compete and thrive in the AI era, ClickHouse is emerging as the de facto database powering the real-time, scalable analytics that AI-driven applications demand. I look forward to building strong relationships not only with forward-thinking customers, but also with our channel and technology partners—working together to help businesses modernize their data infrastructure and unlock transformative outcomes with this foundational technology.”
Arvind Krishnan
Arvind Krishnan
Arvind Krishnan has been hired to be the chief technology officer at the analytics firm Alteryx. In his new position, Krishan will be tasked with driving the Alteryx product roadmap forward as it deepens cloud partnerships to help with customer AI adoption.
Prior to joining Alteryx, Krishnan served as CTO at Bluecore, where he led distributed engineering teams and complex cloud-native initiatives. He also held senior leadership roles at Salesforce, where he spent over a decade scaling product development across multiple cloud products.
“Joining Alteryx at this transformative stage is a unique opportunity to build the future of enterprise analytics and AI,” Krishnan stated. “I’m energized by the company’s vision and the caliber of the engineering organization. Together, we’ll continue to advance an open, scalable, and governed platform that helps customers innovate with confidence.”
Pete DeJoy
Pete DeJoy
Astronomer promoted Co-founder and Chief Product Officer Pete DeJoy to the position of Interim CEO following the sudden departure of its previous chief executive, Andy Byron, following an incident that occurred in Boston at a music concert (which you may have heard about).
DeJoy has been with Astronomer, the commercial vendor behind the open source Apache Airflow data pipeline project, since he co-founded it in 2017 with Ry Walker, Viraj Parekh, Greg Neiheisel, and Paola Peraza Calderon. As the company grew, DeJoy took the titles of VP of product, SVP of product, and finally chief product officer earlier this year.
DeJoy took a philosophical approach to the surprise departure of Byron during the third week of July, which garnered worldwide attention for Byron, Astronomer’s head of HR, Kristin Cabot, and the company at large.
“The events of the past few days have received a level of media attention that few companies–let alone startups in our small corner of the data and AI world–ever encounter,” he stated on LinkedIn. “The spotlight has been unusual and surreal for our team and, while I would never have wished for it to happen like this, Astronomer is now a household name.”
You can read last month’s Career Notes here.
