Wayfair strengthens technology leadership team
Prior to their new roles, Rao served as vice president of artificial intelligence at Target Corporation and Nagrani was vice president of engineering at Google
Wayfair Inc. has announced that Ashwin Rao has joined the company as chief science officer, and Niraj Nagrani as vice president of global supplier marketplace, pricing, catalogue and merchandising technologies.
Both leaders will report to Wayfair’s incoming chief technology officer, Fiona Tan, and they join Wayfair’s bench of technologists across all categories of home.
In his new role, Rao will help accelerate the company’s growth through technological innovation fueled by machine learning, mathematical modelling and algorithms that reportedly further strengthen the shopping experience.
Prior to joining Wayfair, Rao served as vice president of artificial intelligence at Target Corporation where he led Target’s global AI and data science teams in developing products and solutions for supply chain, merchandising, search, recommendations and marketing.
Meanwhile, Nagrani will oversee Wayfair’s merchandising and supplier experiences, and enhance Wayfair’s global supplier catalogue, merchandising, and pricing systems while also creating in-class web/mobile experiences and data insights for suppliers.
Nagrani brings more than two decades of tech leadership to this role, most recently at Google as vice president of engineering, where he drove initiatives to deliver machine learning, artificial intelligence, mobile, web, and cloud tech solutions across Google consumer and developer products.
Tan said: “Ashwin and Niraj bring valuable expertise to the leadership team as we work together to drive the future evolution of our customer experience across online and physical retail.”
Rao added: “I look forward to leading innovation that creates operational efficiencies, enables consumers to easily find the right product, and helps Wayfair achieve its growth objectives.”
Nagrani said: “We are committed to continually evolving our technology platform to make it as easy and efficient as possible for our suppliers to deliver their products to our customers. Both our supplier network and our customer base continue to grow, making this an exciting time to join Wayfair.”
