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Accelerating innovation with
next-generation graph

We believe in the power of graph technology to solve today’s biggest data and business challenges.

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Founded in 2015 in Cologne, Germany, ArangoDB is the company behind ArangoGraph Insights Platform: a next-generation graph data and analytics platform that accelerates application innovation and performance to drive faster value creation. The ground-breaking platform is the scalable backbone for graph analytics and complex data architectures for thousands of Fortune 500 enterprises and innovative startups across many different industries, including financial services, healthcare, and telecommunications.

Today, ArangoDB is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with offices and employees worldwide. Would you like to join Team Avocado? Check out our open positions.

Leadership

Shekhar Iyer, CEO

Shekhar Lyer

Shekhar Iyer is a global technology executive that has spent close to three decades of his career in enterprise software, primarily focused on Big Data, Data Management, Database, AI & ML and Analytics. He has a broad range of international go-to-market experience across sales, marketing, solution engineering, business development partnerships, field enablement, professional services, products and customer success. Prior to ArangoDB, he held executive roles at StreamSets, Couchbase, SAP, SAS and Informatica, among others.

Frank Celler, PhD, CISO

Frank Celler

Frank Celler studied in Aachen and London and obtained a PhD in mathematics. Prior to founding ArangoDB, Frank worked for several German technology companies as a consultant, team lead and C/C++ developer. Frank’s major achievements and projects relevant to ArangoDB are: development of a quota database that was faster than Reuters’, concept and implementation of JIT compilers for Intel and Sparc architectures, concept and implementation of a high-performance in-memory session database for Deutsche Post AG, and development of an IDE for Dylan.

Jörg Schad, PhD, CTO

Jörg Schad

Jörg Schad is the CTO of ArangoDB. Previously, he worked on machine learning infrastructure in healthcare, distributed systems at Mesosphere, implemented distributed and in-memory databases, and conducted research in the Hadoop and cloud areas. He’s also passionate about building community and a frequent speaker at meetups, international conferences, and lecture halls. Jörg studied computer science and philosophy at the Universität des Saarlandes, where he received his PhD for research around distributed databases and data analytics.

Jason Heine, CFO

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Jason Heine is an experienced Chief Financial Officer with a demonstrated history of working in the computer software industry. He has held financial leadership roles at companies including Instana, Moogsoft, AppDynamics, Cloud.com, and Zimbra, where he managed fundraising, cash flow, business planning, and go-to-market strategy. Jason is a Certified Public Accountant and studied accounting at DePaul University.

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Mark Hedderman, Global VP of Sales

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Mark is an accomplished enterprise software leader with a 15+ year track record of building successful businesses through expertise in strategy, sales, product go-to-market, operations, channels, and sales development. He brings a broad perspective, extensive problem solving skills, and the proven ability to convert strategy to action and results. Mark has a track record of successfully growing global teams that drive record revenues and profitability through increased productivity and effectiveness. His proven ability to drive revenue growth stems from many areas of expertise in which he has driven repeated success. These areas include worldwide sales strategy and execution, staff hiring and development, marketing and sales demand generation, customer success/renewals, sales operations, and new products go to market. Prior to joining ArangoDB, Mark worked for companies such as SAS, TIBCO, Instana and SingleStore

Asif Kazi, VP of Customer Success

Asif Kazi of ArangoDB

Asif Kazi has directed global sales engineering, professional services, and technical customer success teams for over 15 years at companies including Foursquare, Ahana, Amazon Web Services, StreamSets, and Couchbase. He is passionate about working with customers and solving their business problems. His core competencies include scaling teams globally, building referenceable client relationships, and accelerating revenue growth.

Corey Sommers, CMO

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Corey is one of the early pioneers of the discipline of Field Enablement within high technology, with over 20 years of dedicated B2B Marketing and Field Enablement experience in his 25+ year career. He is co-author of the Amazon best selling book Whiteboard Selling (Wiley Press 2012) about one of the most important skills in high tech B2B sales - Visual Storytelling. This background translates into a singular passion for providing sellers with the right mix of messaging, training, automation, and tools to increase their productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness. Corey has helped to bridge the Marketing and Sales gap at startups all the way up to large, public technology companies. He manages teams in the spirit of out-of-the-box thinking, collaboration, and accountability.

Carsten Tang, VP of Engineering

carsten of ArangoDB

Carsten Tang is an accomplished leader with over a decade of experience in engineering management, having worked in both established companies and startups. He has spearheaded growth and innovation across engineering teams in both 

frontend and backend technologies, spanning multiple geographical locations. Before joining ArangoDB he worked in the veterinary software industry developing management systems for the Nordic countries. Passionate about talent development, Carsten champions initiatives to attract, retain, and develop top engineering talent, ensuring a culture of learning and professional growth.
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Jasmin Weaver, Global Director of Human Resources

Shekhar Lyer of ArangoDB

Jasmin Weaver is a global HR leader with extensive experience directing start-up departments, company transitions, government project management, and recruiting from large-scale hiring to special or emergency projects with very specific goals. Her areas of expertise include talent acquisition and recruiting, corporate and employee communications, as well as rewards, recognition and performance management.

Board of Directors

Shekhar Iyer, CEO

Shekhar Lyer

Shekhar Iyer is a global technology executive that has spent close to three decades of his career in enterprise software, primarily focused on Big Data, Data Management, Database, AI & ML and Analytics. He has a broad range of international go-to-market experience across sales, marketing, solution engineering, business development partnerships, field enablement, professional services, products and customer success. Prior to ArangoDB, he held executive roles at StreamSets, Couchbase, SAP, SAS and Informatica, among others.

Claudius Weinberger, Co-Founder, ArangoDB

Claudius Weinberger

Claudius studied economics with business informatics as a key aspect at the University of Cologne. For more than 20 years he has built databases, including in-memory to mostly memory, K/V stores over multi-dimensional cubes, as well as graph. In 2015, Claudius co-founded ArangoDB, where he served as CEO and CPO (Chief Product Officer) for the first seven years of the company.

Murray Rode, General Partner, Bow Capital

Murray Rode Bow Capital 300x200 b

Murray Rode is a venture investor, software executive (CEO & CFO) and director with over 30 years of experience in the technology industry, spanning both public and private companies and including broad expertise in corporate transactions and M&A. Murray spent much of his career at TIBCO Software Inc., where he held various roles including CFO, COO, and CEO. Murray is a graduate of the University of Alberta.

Curt Gunsenheimer, Managing Partner, IRIS

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As an investor at IRIS, Curt Gunsenheimer has supported more than 20 European and U.S. companies from the growth phase to global acquisitions or IPOs. Prior to Iris Capital, Gunsenheimer worked at Goldman Sachs and Robertson Stephens in London and San Francisco, where he was responsible for numerous IPOs of technology companies across Europe and international M&A transactions. He also worked for MIT on programs on entrepreneurship and technology spin-outs.

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Mirko Novakavic, Founding Partner, New Forge

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Mirko Novakovic is the founding Partner of New Forge and tech serial entrepreneur. He supports portfolio companies in challenging their business models and go-to-market strategies. Prior to New Forge, Mirko co-founded Germany-based codecentic AG and has been founder and CEO at Instana Inc. (acq. by IBM in 2021).