Suresh Kumar: Walmart's Bengaluru-born CTO with $15 million salary in news amid layoffs
Suresh Kumar, the California-based chief technology officer of Walmart, is in the news amid reports of the retailer slashing 1,500 tech jobs. Walmart is cutting corporate staff in the company's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, and other positions in its global technology team.
The decision to layoff around 1,500 employees is aimed at accelerating decision-making and reducing complexities, Walmart CTO Suresh Kumar and US Chief Executive Officer John Furner said in a memo viewed by Bloomberg.
Bengaluru-born Suresh Kumar has made the news amid reports of layoffs at Walmart. Here is all you need to know about Suresh Kumar:
Suresh Kumar serves as the executive vice president and global chief technology officer (CTO) and chief development officer (CDO) of Walmart. He has over three decades of experience in the tech industry, having worked at Google, Microsoft and Amazon before this.
Based in Sunnyvale, California, Kumar was born in India. In an interview with Times of India, Kumar had revealed that he was born in Basavanagudi, Bengaluru. He spent his whole childhood in Bengaluru, up until the point where he left for college.
Kumar is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras. He holds a BTech in aerospace engineering from IIT Madras. He later obtained a PhD in control systems from Princeton University.
In a recent LinkedIn post, he reflected on his time at IIT. 'I completed my undergrad time in the late '80s, and one truth still stands out: learning never stops,' he wrote.
According to Suresh Kumar's LinkedIn profile, he started his career in 1992 as a Research Staff Member at IBM. After seven years at IBM, he moved to Amazon as a Software Architect.
At Amazon, Kumar rose through the ranks until he was appointed as Vice President, Retail Systems in 2005. It was a position he held for three years before he was promoted to VP, Worldwide Retail Systems and Retail Services.
In 2014, Kumar joined Microsoft as Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Cloud Infrastructure and Operations. After almost four years at Microsoft, he moved to Google as VP and GM, Google Display+Video ads, Apps and Analytics.
Kumar joined Walmart in July 2019. 'Suresh's organization includes technologists from across Walmart that power all of our global businesses, including – Walmart U.S., Sam's Club, and Walmart International. He also oversees our global shared services, data, cloud, infrastructure, and information security organizations,' reads his page on the Walmart website.
Suresh Kumar earned $15.98 million last year, according to an SEC filing. This included a base salary of $1.1 million and stock awards of $12 million.
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