Artificial intelligence research and development is bogged down by a lack of interoperability: there’s no shortage of tools, techniques, and expertise available, but getting them to work together is another thing entirely.

Our focus has always been on improving the machine learning developer experience, whether that’s for people working on cutting edge academic research or innovators at leading enterprise endeavors. In addition to building solutions that unify the machine learning lifecycle, we’ve assembled a team of leaders whose varied and extensive experience represents this industry’s many facets. Building machine learning tools that work together in concert first requires a team of people whose strategic and productive cooperation will be mirrored in the products they develop.

Today, we’re excited to announce four senior executive hires who will enable us to advance our mission of accelerating an AI-powered world.

Below, we asked them to share what excites them the most about what we’re building here at Lightning.

Jatheen Anand, VP Engineering

Jatheen Anand

Jatheen Anand, previously at Veritas, Symantec, and, most recently, Cohesity, joins us as Lightning’s first VP of Engineering. He joins Lightning at a point where our current stage dovetails nicely with his previous experience scaling high-growth startups to become global institutions. His focus on both organizational and technological development will make him a key player in scaling not only the products we build at Lightning, but also the teams that build them.

“I’m excited about what we’re building at Lightning not only in terms of how these products will affect the landscape of AI development, but equally in terms of how we think about the people and teams that build them. Building tools that are easy to use and still highly performant is challenging, both from a technological and from an organizational perspective. I look forward to bringing my wealth of experience scaling teams and products to bear on my work at Lightning, and I can’t wait to see what we build together.

Priya Shivakumar, VP Product

Priya Shivakumar

Priya Shivakumar joins Lightning as VP of Product from Confluent, where she led product strategy for Confluent’s cloud-native systems. Today, only some of the largest companies have in-house teams to build machine learning solutions that address their specific needs. For Priya, bringing those powerful tools to researchers, students, community members, and companies of all sizes through a clear product and go-to-market strategy will be a central focus. In a space that still lacks a coherent user experience, Priya will lead Lightning’s efforts in bringing leap-frog products to market.

“At Lightning, I look forward to putting an emphasis on delivering solutions that are truly differentiated from other solutions in the market. The AI/ML space is still waiting for the next big leap that will unify the development lifecycle, and improve how machine learning researchers interact with MLOps engineers, software engineers, DevOps and IT professionals. There’s so much complexity in this space, and my key focus is on ensuring that we craft product experiences that provide outsized value to our users and customers in helping them achieve their goals.”

Mike Bilodeau, VP Marketing

Mike Bilodeau

Mike Bilodeau, who joins as our first VP of Marketing, has previously led marketing and broader go-to-market strategies and programs at Kong and Rubrik. One of Lightning’s core efforts is to grow the community and customer base by synthesizing complex technical solutions into user experiences that are simple, elegant, and accessible. In order to do that, Mike’s key focus will be on translating Lightning’s engineering efforts into effective go-to-market, sales enablement, and user-facing communication strategies. His user-centric view overlaps perfectly with Lightning’s goal of bringing world-class machine learning tools to users across academia and industry.

“What I’m looking to bring to Lightning is that ‘a-ha’ moment of understanding, when something that was once difficult and dense just clicks. In marketing terms, that means working closely with engineering and product experts to clearly articulate how our products and solutions provide value to our community  and customers. I’m fortunate to step into the Lightning community that is incredibly engaged and rapidly growing. This makes my job a lot of fun in that I get to learn from super smart people working on cutting edge research and technology whether I’m working with my peers, the community, or one of our customers. Where I work best is helping our customers be successful, and then taking their stories and turning them into engaging campaigns, community programs, and content that help to repeat the cycle.”

JP Hennessy, VP Design and User Experience

JP Hennessy

JP Hennessy, our VP of Design and User Experience, has a work history that spans tech, media, e-commerce and even non-profit spaces. Most recently he led product design initiatives across Meta’s developer, data and AI infrastructures. He was dealing with UX before UX was even a thing. His attention to bringing traditional, designed experiences to technical products will be a core focus as Lightning continues to develop machine learning tools that blend power and simplicity. For JP, Lightning’s potential is its ability to address what he sees as a “broken space”, even for the world’s leading companies.

“The thing that excites me the most about Lightning is being able to improve a space that has been underserved for years. When we think about user experience, we often think about customers and end users, but in the field of AI development that user experience is as broken for the end user as it is for internal teams. My goal is to echo that elegant, smooth, consumer product experience that people have come to expect and bring that philosophy to build tools that will allow people to focus on the job they need to get done. Design thinking hasn’t always been the focus in AI, and that’s where Lightning has the potential to make a huge impact.”

Want to build the future of AI with us? We’re hiring!