Leadership

At Elastic, we see endless possibilities in a world of endless data. As CEO of Elastic, Ash Kulkarni’s priority is to drive innovation, and he has the pleasure of working with the bright minds at Elastic to create products and solutions that use the power of search to help its customers and community turn possibilities into results. Ash joined Elastic as chief product officer in 2021 and prior to that held senior product leadership and management roles at McAfee, Akamai, Informatica, and Sun Microsystems. He and his family live in San Francisco and enjoy hiking, skiing, and exploring national parks in their free time.

As a founder of Elastic and CTO, Shay Banon has been fascinated with search ever since he tried to build a recipe app for his wife in 2004, a journey that led to him writing the first few lines of code of Elasticsearch in 2009 and later founding Elastic in 2012. Shay believes finding beauty and excelling is a combination of perspective and grit. As someone who got into computers by counting the number of job postings in the newspaper, he loves building things—a product, a community, or a company and the process of acquiring the knowledge to do so.

Elastic's finance and operations activities are as diverse as our company. Driving integrated cross-functional execution, providing visibility on our business outlook, solving problems creatively with IT solutions, or ensuring our customers and employees can easily engage with us — it’s all in a day’s work for us. As CFO and COO, I have the privilege of leading this team. Before Elastic, I worked at Cisco, VMware, and Infoblox in roles covering both finance and sales. When I’m not working, I enjoy biking Bay Area trails and spending time with my amazing wife and three awesome kids.

Helping customers gain actionable insights from data is increasingly important in a world of ever-increasing volumes of data. At Elastic, I have the privilege of leading our cross-functional product teams. Nothing is more exciting than seeing engineering, product, and design teams working in rhythm to deliver great experiences for our customers. I am passionate about building customer-oriented solutions that balance flexibility and ease of use, and I don’t believe customers should have to compromise for either.

I joined Elastic after three decades in various technology companies leading product and engineering teams. Most recently, I spent 16 years at Amazon Web Services (AWS), where I built and managed dozens of products used by millions of customers worldwide.

I hold a bachelor of science degree from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. My family and I live on the outskirts of Seattle, where we spend time with our pets, which include dogs, cats, chickens, goats, and alpacas. We love to travel but often find it hard to find a pet sitter.

Thousands of companies around the world rely on Elastic to accelerate results that matter. As chief sales officer, that is my role as well. Whether it’s helping our great customers solve complex problems or building a go-to-market strategy designed for growth and scale, my passion has always been about creating impact in areas that truly matter. Here at Elastic, I have the privilege of leading a world-class sales organization that operates within an extraordinary culture.

Before Elastic, I worked at Cohesity, Veritas, IBM, and Hitachi where I focused on organizational transformation, delivering exponential growth, and building high-performance teams.

Outside of the office, I enjoy traveling and playing sports with my wife and son. When we’re not at home in the New York City area, we’re in Vermont where we ski in the winter and golf in the summer.

As the technology landscape becomes increasingly complex, Elastic is uniquely positioned to help companies continue to innovate, even as they look to consolidate technology across the hybrid cloud. As the leader of the global marketing team, I have the privilege of engaging our customers, partners, and the community to share how we can make this a reality for them, all while driving exceptional experiences and outcomes.

I've spent the last 15 years managing marketing strategy and execution across a range of tech companies (Intel, McAfee, Symantec, Palo Alto Networks), with regional and global experience spanning all areas of marketing. I am passionately focused on demonstrating marketing's ability to be a strategic enabler for the business by leveraging data, innovation, and technology to deliver scalable growth.

I originally hail from the land down under (Australia, for those who missed the 'Men at Work' reference), but have been living in NYC for the last 10 years. When I'm not working, I love to read, travel, play tennis as well as cook (and eat) delicious food!

My focus and passion are all about the customer, ensuring both successful adoption of our solutions and a great experience with Elastic. In order to achieve this, we need strong career development for our people and technology to ensure we can scale to support our growth. If we look through the eyes of our customers it will ensure we provide a better experience. That is why the customer journey is at the core of how we operate. At Elastic, I lead our customer success group (CSG) which encompasses our customer success team, training teams, services teams, and support organization. My priority is to ensure that we have a comprehensive and cohesive strategy for all touchpoints that a customer makes with Elastic throughout their journey.

Prior to Elastic, I was the senior vice president of Services and Support for MuleSoft, a Salesforce company, for five years. Prior to Mulesoft, I served as global vice president of Services and Customer Success at Splunk. I also spent 15 years at BMC Software leading worldwide services and various other Geo level roles for Services and PreSales. I have also served as an advisor/coach to companies like Opower and other organizations over the past 20 years.

I’m originally from Queensland, Australia, and hold a degree in Business and Information Technology from Central Queensland University. Currently, I live in Texas with my wife and three children where I enjoy cycling, swimming, traveling, and giving back to the community.

An orchestra is a team of musicians that has infinite opportunities to interpret and create music to inspire an audience. So too does Elastic’s legal team work together to provide innovative and simple solutions to new and complex problems, enabling operational excellence and ease of business for our customers. This is my priority, and I am proud and privileged to lead this diverse and dispersed organization as we continue to learn, grow and thrive.

Prior to Elastic, I was the General Counsel at Arm Ltd. and held senior leadership roles at Symantec Corporation, which acquired AXENT Technologies, Inc. where I was General Counsel. Prior to this, I worked in the international development sector, both at a nonprofit and for the World Bank, in the Africa Department.

I have lived and worked in various places across the U.S. and in Europe. I have a J.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis, MO.

Outside of the office, I love traveling, listening to music and exploring the arts, hiking with the dog and spending time with my family. I live in San Jose with my husband, two terrific kids, and our furry friends.

As the world looks for answers from all their data, Elastic is uniquely positioned to become a generational company. The innovative spirit that is characteristic of the Elastic brand is what allows Elasticians to thrive and grow and help customers deliver on the promise of technologies like Generative AI—today. I am excited to build on this strong foundation of care for technology, customers and people.

I have more than 20 years of HR experience, including leadership roles in IBM’s consulting, industry platforms and blockchain businesses and the company’s compensation and talent organizations. Most recently the vice president, Total Rewards at IBM, where I held global responsibility for the design and delivery of all compensation and benefits programs in addition to Corporate Health and Safety for their 300,000 employees. I have both a Bachelor's degree in International Relations and an MBA from Syracuse University.

I am originally from Syracuse, NY and now live in Austin, TX with my fiancé. I have always been interested in other countries and love to travel. I have two sisters who I am very close with and more than 20 cousins -- and with their partners and children, our annual family reunion is getting complicated!