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Rokt on a roll with new CTO from Apple
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February 20, 2019 News

 

Rokt, the global leader in e-commerce marketing technology has a new Chief Technology Officer. James Wilson brings to the team extensive technical expertise and leadership skills with over 20 years experience in software and network engineering, most recently working in the US in senior engineering roles at both Apple and Amazon.

Wilson, who is now based in the Sydney office, will be responsible for shaping and driving the technical vision for the Rokt business as well as inspiring and growing the engineering team.

CEO Bruce Buchanan commented, “We are delighted to welcome James to the executive team as our first CTO. We spent the last 12 months searching for the right match – requiring extraordinary talent, leadership skills and relevant experience in big data, machine learning, enterprise scale applications, privacy, cloud infrastructure and agile engineering practices – and we have found it in James. In addition, we’re excited to be hiring over 70 additional engineers and dedicating more than USD$23m this year to cutting-edge research and development.”

Buchanan continued “Australia is a hotbed for extraordinarily talented engineers so we’re delighted that we can bring such a seasoned professional back to Australia to help mentor and develop the next generation of the world’s best.”

Wilson joins Rokt from Apple where he spent the past 8 years rising up the ranks to the Senior Software Engineering Manager responsible for over 50 engineers developing Apple’s Mail, Contacts and Calendar apps on iOS and macOS, the out-of-box device setup experience and cloud data privacy systems. At Apple he led the projects to bring Two-Factor Authentication to all iCloud accounts, iCloud Family Sharing and the privacy initiatives that keep Apple at the forefront of consumer data privacy. Prior to this, Wilson held a senior leadership role at Amazon (AWS) where he led a global organisation of engineers and data scientists in applying machine learning to network monitoring at a massive global scale.

“Rokt has quickly established itself as one of the smartest companies globally in a rapidly evolving tech world,” commented Wilson. “As our products continue to scale, we’re looking to build a ground-breaking engineering team who can solve not only the problems immediately in front of us, but are ready to take on the challenges of tomorrow. Gone are the days of great tech being found only in Silicon Valley – I’m thrilled to be heading home to join such a forward thinking business and look forward to pushing the boundaries with transformative technology.”

This appointment is reflective of Rokt’s ongoing commitment to building world leading technology and in shaping how e-commerce brands use AI to get smarter in the transaction. Rokt, who recently won a landmark federal court case against IP Australia, is at the forefront of world-class innovation and is committed to supporting and developing technological innovation. Rokt currently employs over 175 staff and is operating in 10 global markets.

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