Huawei has lost a highly visible representative to the software-defined networking (SDN) community, as Justin Dustzadeh has joined Visa as vice president and head of global infrastructure network services.

Dustzadeh started his new job in January but started chatting up the move just this week with an email to SDxCentral and a note on Twitter. His new Foster City, Calif. location keeps him in arm's reach of Silicon Valley.

The new job brings Dustzadeh — who'd been Huawei's CTO and VP of technology strategy — back to the user world. He spent the 90s with French carriers Orange and SFR, then joined AT&T, where he stayed for seven years.  From 2006 until the end of last year, he worked on the vendor side, first as CTO and a founder of content-search startup Divvio, then at positions with Ericsson and Huawei.

Dustzadeh's departure really does deprive Huawei of some SDN cachet, as he's been a highly visible member of the SDN community. He'd been an executive council member at the Open Networking Foundation and chair of its Migration Working Group, and he was a founding board member of the CloudEthernet Forum.

His LinkedIn page lists those positions as having terminated last month — which would make sense, as they were all probably related to his employment with Huawei.

At Visa, he'll spearhead the development of the company's commercial and customer networks, almost certainly adding generous doses of SDN, NFV, and virtualization. His charter encompasses both network architecture and operations — and he's looking to flesh out his staff with SDN architects, among other positions, as his LinkedIn page notes.