Selipsky has served as CEO of cloud data firm Tableau for nearly five years, doubling the company’s value before being acquired by Salesforce in 2019 for $ 15.7 billion.
Prior to that, he held a number of senior roles at AWS. Selipsky was appointed one of the company’s first vice presidents in 2005 after starting just two years earlier, and has been in sales, marketing and support at AWS for 11 years, according to a letter Jassy sent to AWS employees on Tuesday. .
However, Selipsky is not one of several analysts predicted by analysts to get the best jobs, including Matt Garman, AWS’s top sales and marketing manager.
“Adam brings strong judgment, customer engagement, team building, question generation and CEO experience to an already strong AWS leadership team,” Jassy said in the letter. “And after 11 years in AWS, he knows our culture and business well.”
Selipsky will return to Amazon on May 17 and switch over a few weeks before officially taking over as CEO in the third quarter, according to Jassy’s letter.
He has big shoes to fill: Jassy oversaw the rapid growth of AWS for nearly two decades to a business of more than $ 50 billion that contributes more than half of Amazon’s total revenue, and the backbone for much of the internet delivers.
“It’s easy to forget that AWS is still in the early stages of what’s possible,” Jassy said. “We have a lot more to figure out for customers, and we have a very strong leadership team and a group of builders to make it happen. I’m excited about what lies ahead.”
Brian Klingbeil, chief strategy officer at hybrid IT provider and AWS partner Enoso, called Selipsky’s hiring “a smart move” by Amazon.
“It will be important to look at Selipsky’s strategic moves at AWS’s pace with Azure and even Google Cloud’s upward momentum,” Klingbeil said.