5 Huge AWS Executive Hires And Exits, Including CEO Selipsky

As AWS’ Adam Selipsky departs as CEO, CRN looks at the biggest executive departures and hirings of 2024 so far.

From Amazon Web Services’ Adam Selipsky officially stepping down as CEO Monday to the recent hiring of Google Cloud’s former vice president of engineering, AWS is witnessing a major leadership shakeup.

After three years of leading AWS, Selipsky officially left the company June 3, handing over the reins to longtime AWS veteran and new CEO Matt Garman.

“AWS is better positioned than anyone to expand possibilities for customers going forward,” Selipsky recently said on LinkedIn. “Leaving things in good hands with Matt Garman and the team.”

Garman is an 18-year AWS veteran and most recently was senior vice president of AWS sales, marketing and global services. He first joined Amazon as a software development product manager for EC2 in 2006, working his way up the AWS ranks over the years.

“I am more optimistic than I have ever been for the potential for innovation and growth ahead of us, and I look forward to helping us move faster, invent more and operate as one team to help our customers,” said Garman in a recent blog post.

The Seattle-based company also has been hiring top-notch talent over the past several months as it continues to lead the cloud computing market.

AWS currently owns 31 percent share of the global cloud infrastructure services market, according to IT research firm Synergy Research Group. Microsoft is in second place with 25 percent share of the global cloud market, then Google at 11 percent share.

Here are the five most significant executive hires and departures at AWS over the past several months that partners, investors and customers should know about.

Adam Selipsky (Exit)

Former AWS Position: CEO

Years At AWS: 15

New Position: Unknown

Selipsky has been leading AWS since May 2021. During his tenure as CEO, Selipsky increased AWS sales to a $100 billion annual run rate and drove innovation, particularly around AI, in his three years as CEO.

He officially left the company June 3.

Selipsky was one of the first vice presidents AWS hired back in 2005. He spent 11 years leading AWS sales, marketing and support before leaving to become CEO of Tableau. He left Tableau in 2021 to rejoin AWS as CEO.

“Matt [Garman] and the AWS leadership team are ready for this next big opportunity,” Selipsky recently said. “I’m excited to see what they and you do next because I know it will be impressive. The future is bright for AWS (and for Amazon).”

Selipsky has yet to unveil what his next move will be.

“I’m looking forward to taking some time off with family, while taking the opportunity to think about my next adventure,” he said.

Baskar Sridharan (Hire)

New AWS Position: VP, AI/ML Services, Infrastructure

Former Position: VP, Engineering, Google Cloud Platform

Years At Google And Microsoft: 21

AWS picked up a big Google and Microsoft expert with the hiring of Sridharan as the company’s new vice president of artificial intelligence and machine learning services and infrastructure.

Sridharan will help lead AWS’ AI and generative AI strategy, including around Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Bedrock, core data services and ML infrastructure for developing deep learning frameworks and engines.

Sridharan joined AWS in May after spending more than five years at Google Cloud. He was most recently vice president of engineering for the Google Cloud Platform, where he managed the engineering team for Google Compute Infrastructure as well as several product management teams within Google Cloud.

From 2003 to 2018, Sridharan was a top engineering leader at Microsoft. Sridharan left Microsoft in 2018 as partner director of software engineering, Azure Data Lake and Cosmos.

Praveen Rao (Exit)

Former AWS Position: Global Head, Industrial Cloud, IoT, Analytics

Years At AWS: 3

New Position: Managing Director, Manufacturing Industry, Google Cloud

Rao held the big responsibility of being AWS’ global head of industrial cloud, IoT and analytics for the past three years.

Rao was the global P&L leader of AWS’ go-to-market strategy, partner ecosystem, cloud product strategy, industry 4.0 initiatives and industrial data migrations and modernizations.

He left AWS this year to join Google Cloud as managing director for the manufacturing industry vertical at Google, where he is responsible for strategy, solutions, go-to-market and the partner ecosystem in the space.

Gee Rittenhouse (Hire)

New AWS Position: VP, Enterprise Security Services

Former Position: CEO, Skyhigh Security; Cisco SVP

Rittenhouse left his role as CEO of cybersecurity provider Skyhigh Security this year to join AWS to help customers protect their data and applications.

Rittenhouse is now vice president at AWS responsible for the company’s enterprise security services business.

“AWS is renowned for its commitment to providing industry-leading cloud security, and together with our partners, I’m looking forward to building on this incredible foundation and solving our customers’ hardest security challenges,” Rittenhouse recently said on LinkedIn.

Skyhigh Security is a security services company aimed at securing data with cloud-native solutions.

Ashish Dhawan (Exit)

Former AWS Position: Managing Director, Worldwide Head of Sales, Enterprise Workloads

Years At AWS: 5

New Position: SVP, CRO, NetApp’s Cloud Business Unit

Dhawan was AWS’ enterprise workload business leader for years, tasked with helping the company’s largest customers migrate their infrastructure and modernize their applications.

He spent over five years at AWS, most recently as managing director and worldwide head of enterprise workload sales, where he led a $6 billion business.

He left AWS to join NetApp in 2024 to lead the company’s cloud sales strategy. NetApp said Dhawan’s role was created to support NetApp’s continued commitment to the cloud with Dhawan leading a high-performing sales team.

“As the leader of NetApp's Cloud Business Unit, I'm proud to be at the forefront of a rapidly growing industry that offers transformational workload and AI-led solutions for our customers,” Dhawan recently said on LinkedIn.