Dive Brief:
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Microsoft announced Tuesday it has named Kevin Scott as its first company chief technology officer (CTO), according to a news release. Scott will report directly to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
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Scott previously served as senior vice president of infrastructure for LinkedIn, which Microsoft acquired last year. Prior to LinkedIn, Scott held a number of engineering leadership roles at Google and AdMob. He’s also been an adviser to several Silicon Valley startups, according to Microsoft.
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"Kevin's first area of focus is to bring together the world's leading professional network and professional cloud," said Nadella in a statement.
Dive Insight:
Though Microsoft is a tech pioneer, they have not yet had a company-wide CTO. But because the company acquired LinkedIn last year, it has some serious work to do in integrating the two companies, so it may see the CTO role as a key to helping make that happen.
In December, both the Microsoft and LinkedIn CEOs said they were beginning the process of combining the two companies. Their integration priority intends to heighten the user experience, such as combining LinkedIn identity in Microsoft Outlook and the Office suite, and enabling members drafting resumes in Word to update their profiles and apply for jobs on LinkedIn.
About 10,000 LinkedIn employees joined Microsoft.
