Walmart CTO leaves to join Pinterest

Jeremy King, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Walmart, is departing the company to join social platform Pinterest Inc. as head of engineering.

San Francisco-based Pinterest said Thursday that King will oversee the team that manages its visual discovery engine, which provides recommendations to more than 250 million people in product segments such as home, food, style and beauty.

King (pictured above at the NRF Big Show in January) will report to Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann. The company said that its recent engineering projects include applying computer vision to automate Shop the Look, which helps people find and buy products inside fashion and home decor Pins, as well as new shopping features like Catalogs, shopping ads and personalized recommendations.

“Not only is Jeremy a respected engineering leader, but from the moment we met him, we knew his values around putting the customer first were aligned with our own focus on Pinners,” Silbermann said in a statement. “As we build products to inspire people to create a life they love, Jeremy’s technical experience and leadership are a perfect combination to build a visual discovery engine for all.”

At Walmart, King led the retail giant’s e-commerce technology team, which powers the tech behind its U.S. stores and the online operations for Walmart and Jet. He oversaw customer, merchant and supply-chain technologies across cloud and data platforms, with a focus developing seamless shopping experience.

Related:NRF Big Show: Retailers embark on transformation

In mid-January, at the National Retail Federation’s 2019 Big Show in New York City, King discussed the technology reorganization Walmart underwent to drive the omnichannel transformation of its retail business.

“Right now, what’s really working for us is groceries and grocery delivery and pickup. And we’re seeing real traction with our customers; they love it,” he said at the NRF event. “How we can make that experience even better is what we’ve been focused on.”

An expert in e-commerce development and building and scaling consumer products, King came to Walmart in July 2011 as senior vice president and CTO of @WalmartLabs. He was promoted to executive vice president and CTO of Walmart U.S. and eCommerce in January 2017. Before joining Walmart, he served as executive vice president of technology at LiveOps and vice president of software development and engineering at eBay.