PayPal is losing its Chief Technology Officer James Barrese, who is stepping down “to take time off.” Barrese will remain with PayPal for a time to ensure a smooth transition.
PayPal named Sri Shivananda his replacement – he will take over as Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer effective April 1, 2016.
With the departure of Barrese, PayPal will realign responsibilities. “As CTO, Sri will oversee the company’s platform and infrastructure with a focus on availability, scalability, performance and information security,” PayPal said in its announcement. “The company’s Payments and Identity teams will move under the Product and Engineering organization, enabling a stronger end-to-end view of PayPal’s customer experience as the company launches new capabilities.”
Shivananda has been with the company for 15 years, first leading the Global Platform and Infrastructure (GPI) team that powered both the eBay Inc. and PayPal businesses. He then joined PayPal after the separation with eBay as VP of GPI, a role in which he reported to Barrese.
As for the departing CTO, Barrese said in the company announcement, “It has been an honor to work with the incredible talent across PayPal, and I am happy to see Sri take on greater responsibilities that are perfectly aligned with his strengths as a leader. We have an extremely deep bench of expertise on our technology team, and I’m confident Sri is well prepared and positioned to ensure PayPal’s technology platform remains at the leading edge as PayPal continues to define the future of digital payments.”
