Kulkarni, who will report to Elastic founder and Chief Executive Officer Shay Banon, has more than 20 years of experience in enterprise software and has led product and engineering teams at various data analytics, web infrastructure, and security companies, including McAfee, Akamai, Informatica and Sun Microsystems.
“I’m pleased to welcome Ash to Elastic as our first CPO,” Banon said in a news release. “He joins as the opportunity to grow our platform and solutions has expanded exponentially and we’re leveraging that momentum to build impactful products that support our community of users. Ash has experience building and running robust engineering teams while also working across marketing, field, enablement, packaging and pricing, and customers, to bring game-changing products and solutions to market. I am excited to work alongside Ash to bring the power of search to our community through our Enterprise Search, Observability, and Security solutions that are built into a single technology stack, and grow our Elastic Cloud presence globally.”
Kulkarni said in the news release: “I’ve seen first-hand the power of Elasticsearch and the Elastic Stack, and I am convinced of the versatility and immense potential of the platform in helping customers derive insights from their data. I’m excited to work alongside the leadership team and other Elasticians to realize the full potential of Elastic as the next platform powerhouse of our era.”
Kulkarni is the latest addition to Elastic’s executive team following the recent appointments of Sally Jenkins as chief marketing officer and Paul Appleby as president for worldwide field operations.
Kulkarni, a Bay Area resident, has a bachelor's in engineering from the University of Mumbai, a master of science degree in computer engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and a master of business administration degree in marketing and finance from UC Berkeley.
