Juniper Networks' loss is Nokia's gain as one of the former's VPs jumped ship from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to join Team Justin Hotard.

Pavan Kurapati joined Nokia in the seemingly new role of SVP and CTO for data center networking. In a LinkedIn post published Thursday, Kurapati wrote: "We are officially in the AI super cycle, and I am incredibly excited to lead Nokia’s technology strategy and architecture for AI data center networking during this pivotal era.

"I’m currently on Day 4, and I couldn't have asked for a better onboarding experience. Attending the Leadership Summit in Lisbon has been a whirlwind of inspiration. The warm welcome from the leadership team has been world-class, and I am leaving Lisbon energized, motivated, and ready to drive this transformation."

Kurapati went on to thank Nokia CEO Justin Hotard and chief technology and AI officer Pallavi Mahajan.

Kurapati comes to the Finnish giant following a 16-year stint at Juniper Networks, most recently serving as VP for technical solutions architecture. Kurapati started as technical staff in 2009 at Juniper's Indian offices, before progressing into various engineering roles before becoming head of global service provider architecture in 2021.

Among his achievements was the design and deployment of large-scale high-performance computing (HPC)/AI clusters for the latest Nvidia and AMD GPUs; advanced 5G infrastructure build out; and pioneering the Juniper Cloud Native Router, described as the first fully functional Junos-based Kubernetes container network interface (CNI).

Prior to Juniper, Kurapati worked at Infosys Technologies, where he served as a senior technical architect on Alcatel-Lucent and British Telecom projects.

The exec follows in the footsteps of various Juniper stalwarts leaving the networking giant post-HPE acquisition. These include its global partner and channel VP Gordon Mackintosh, who, as revealed by SDxCentral, went on to an Equinix role last month.

EMEA VP Gos Hein van de Wouw, meanwhile, defected to join cloud network firm Extreme Networks in the same month, while chief network strategist Neil McRae pivoted to U.K. broadband firm CityFibre in December.

Replying to Kurapati's LinkedIn post, fellow Juniper alumnus and Nokia VP for data centers Michael Bushong wrote: "A lot of talent has been on the move for the past couple of years. People talk but they ultimately bet with their feet. Something is happening here. And it’s awesome to have another friendly and talented person to join the mission."