Li brings more than 25 years of experience to the Datadog position and was described by the CEO as having ‘deep expertise’ in AI, cloud infrastructure and enterprise software.
Cloud security platform Datadog has appointed Dr Yanbing Li as its new chief product officer, where she will work to scale up its portfolio.
Li brings more than 25 years of experience to the new role, having previous experience with various big players including VMware and Google. She started her career as a senior engineering manager with Synopsys in 1998.
She moved to VMware in 2008 where she held multiple leadership positions, including a senior VP and general manager role between 2015 and 2019. She was a VP of engineering and product for Google Cloud between 2019 and 2021.
Her latest role was with Aurora, where she was the senior VP of engineering since 2021, leading all areas of software development for the company. She will now use her expertise in various sectors – including AI, enterprise software and cloud operations – to help scale up the Datadog product portfolio.
Li holds a PhD degree in electrical engineering and computer engineering from Princeton University, a master’s degree from Cornell University and a bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University.
“Datadog’s track record as a leader in observability and security speaks for itself,” Li said. “It’s an exciting time to join the company and work with its global customers and world-class product and engineering teams to set the stage for what’s next in the industry.
“I look forward to expanding on the depth and breadth of Datadog’s offerings with input from real end users.”
Olivier Pomel, co-founder and CEO of Datadog, said Li is a technology leader with “established experience building market-leading products at hyper-growth companies”.
“Her deep expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning, cloud and data infrastructure, enterprise software, and cloud operations will help scale the Datadog product portfolio to best meet the needs of our global customers,” Pomel said.
In 2019, Datadog went public through an initial public offering after it was approached by Cisco with an acquisition offer of roughly $7bn, according to reports at the time. Datadog reportedly rejected the advance “because it felt it could be worth more as a public company over time”.
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