April C-suite shake-ups leave some in, some out

April showers bring May flowers, and also shake-ups in the tech C-suite. Here’s who came and went.

Jason Taylor moved from Meta to Microsoft

Microsoft is going all in on AI. The tech behemoth hired former Meta VP of infrastructure Jason Taylor as corporate VP and deputy CTO on April 22.

“There’s recently been a bunch of speculation about our supercomputing plans, most of it amusingly wrong,” Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing the hire. “But it is true that this work is mind boggling in its ambition and complexity.”

Hence the hiring of Taylor, a longtime Meta employee who worked there from 2009 to 2022. After Meta, Taylor joined investing firm Intrepid Ventures, where he worked until being snapped up by Microsoft.

F5 picked up Kunal Anand

Security management company F5 announced Kunal Anand as its new CTO on April 2. Anand, a veteran CTO, will be “responsible for setting the technology vision for F5,” the company said in a statement.

Anand was previously CTO at Imperva for five years, following more than five years as CTO at Prevoty, the runtime application services company he co-founded that Imperva acquired in 2018.

CISA internet specialist Sean Connelly leaves the agency

Federal cybersecurity expert Sean Connelly left the government on April 19 after two decades. In a LinkedIn post announcing his departure, Connelly highlighted his role in internet connectivity, technology modernization, and zero trust.

“My federal career was devoted to fostering secure and efficient technology usage to improve public access to services, information, and funds, thereby benefiting the American people and our stakeholders,” Connelly wrote. “If my efforts over the past 20 years have helped the good guys while frustrating the bad guys, my mission is a success.”

Connelly worked at CISA for 11 years as the TIC program manager and zero trust director, coming there from the State Department, where he was a senior cybersecurity and IT design architect.

Dallas CIO Bill Zielinski departed for the private sector

After a three-decade-plus career in the public sector, Dallas city CIO Bill Zielinski left for the private sector. His last day was April 30.

“I had this great opportunity that came my way that, at the end of the day, given where I am in my career and where I am in my life, was just a great match,” Zielinski said in an interview with the Dallas News. “And so I said yes.”

Zielinski left after almost four years as the city’s CTO. Prior to that, he worked for a number of federal agencies including the General Services Administration, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Social Security Administration. He didn’t reveal where he’s headed next.