Here are some of the latest executive hirings, promotions, and staff changes that happened in February. If you’d like SDxCentral to report on your company’s movers and shakers, or if you’ve got a tip about layoffs and restructuring, please send the information to Sydney Sawaya ([email protected]) for inclusion in the monthly headcount column.

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos stepped down. The company announced that Amazon Web Services (AWS) CEO Andy Jassy will take over this summer as Bezos transitions to an executive chair role on the company’s board.

The news dropped just as the markets closed and about an hour before the cloud and retail giant was scheduled to discuss its fourth quarter of 2020 financial results.

Bezos said he will transition to executive chair of Amazon’s board where he plans to focus his attention on new products and initiatives. “As executive chair, I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions,” he wrote in an internal letter obtained by CNBC.

While Biden obviously has a lot on his plate, it was notable that one of the early positions filled in his cabinet was that of David Recordon as director of technology in the White House’s Office of Management and Administration. Recordon has a long history as a developer in the open source community, most recently serving as an engineering director at Facebook and a VP for infrastructure and security at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Recordon was also named the “best strategist” as part of the 2007 Google-O’Reilly Open Source Award program, and was the youngest recipient at the time for the award. He has also worked on a number of open source projects like the OAuth security authorization open standards and the OpenID security authentication platform.

Recordon noted that security focus in a LinkedIn post about his appointment.

CloudSphere’s new CEO Jane Gilson took the reins of the multi-cloud management startup, joining the exclusive club of female tech CEOs and becoming the company’s first female chief executive.

Prior to joining CloudSphere, Gilson was Microsoft’s general manager of business strategy, and Google’s director of large customer sales for emerging markets where she grew Google’s multi-billion-dollar emerging market division more than 66%. She wants to grow CloudSphere at a similar, global scale.

In addition to meeting sales targets and market-share goals, however, diversity and inclusion play prominent roles in scaling CloudSphere’s business, Gilson said. “Diversity and inclusion is central to everything that we need to be able to do,” she said. “We need to represent the population at large.”

As a Microsoft executive in the Czech Republic, for example, she initiated a retention program for women to help them learn different skill sets and ways of negotiating and a female leadership forum called Opening Windows.

Rajeev Suri, former Nokia CEO, succeeded Rupert Pearce as CEO of Inmarsat.

SingleStore announced the addition of Oliver Schabenberger as chief innovation officer.

Carla Piñeyro Sublett joined IBM as its new SVP and CMO.

ECI Software promoted Trevor Gruenewald to CEO and Sarah Hagan to president and COO. Ron Books, ECI’s current CEO, will transition to the role of Chairman.

Carrie Palin, SVP and CMO of Splunk, was appointed to NetApp's board of directors.

SAP announced that Brian Duffy will lead the newly formed RISE with SAP Organization business unit as president of cloud.

Deena Thomchick was named Axis Security's new VP of product marketing.

Application and cloud workload protection company TrueFort welcomed Lane Bess, former CEO of Palo Alto Networks, to its board of directors.

Modern network performance provider Infovista appointed Kristian Thyregod as president of global enterprise.

Justin Tibbs joined EVOTEK as its new chief engineering officer.

Aiven expanded its leadership team with two new hires, appointing Julian Lange CFO and James Arlen as CISO.

Enterprise software delivery company CloudBees announced the appointment of Stephen DeWitt as its new CEO. Co-founder and former CEO Sacha Labourey will remain involved at CloudBees as chief strategy officer.

ForgePoint Capital promoted Will Lin to managing director, Ernie Bio to principal, and Rohit Gupta to associate.

Commvault welcomed former VP of sales cloud product marketing at Salesforce Isabelle Guis as its new CMO.

Cybersecurity services firm Steel Root added three new names to its executive team with the appointments of Helen Protopapas as VP of finance, Tom Whaley as VP of sales, and Rick Franke as VP of global customer success, services, and support.

Vodafone appointed Olaf Swantee to serve on the company's board as a non-executive director.

Palo Alto Networks welcomed former IBM X-Force VP Wendi Whitmore into her new role as SVP.

IT services provider Tech Mahindra named Milind Kulkarni its new CFO.

Cybersecurity company Tanium announced Matt Thompson, former EVP of field operations at Adobe, joined Tanium’s board of directors.

Codefresh promoted Dan Garfield, who joined founder and CEO Raziel Tabib to launch the company in 2016, to chief open source officer.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and multi-cloud data management service provider DDN appointed Amy Medeiros SVP of corporate marketing and inside sales.

Google Cloud welcomed Monique Picou as its new VP of product, technology strategy, and global server operations.

iboss named Eric Cornelius as CPOr and Wallace Sann as SVP of technical operations.

Lacework expanded its leadership team with the addition of David “Hat” Hatfield as chairman and CEO.

Identity-driven cyber resilience provider Semperis tapped former HPE  executive Guido Grillenmeier to serve as its new chief technologist.

Michael Dickman joined Gigamon as its new CPO.

Day Zero identity verification company Socure announced the appointment of Rong Cao as its new SVP of technology.

XM Cyber added three new names to its executive bench with the appointments of Uri Levy as SVP of worldwide sales and field operations, Shaul Efraim as SVP of marketing, and Lior Barak as CFO.

Databricks appointed Vinod Marur as SVP of engineering.

John Johasky, a former HPE executive, joined MetricStream as its new chief sales officer.

INAP named Monique Stone as VP of channel and alliances.