Walmart Names Suresh Kumar to 'Elevated' Chief Technology Officer Role

Walmart has appointed former Google, Microsoft and Amazon executive Suresh Kumar to a new role as the company’s chief technology officer and chief development officer.

Kumar will report directly to CEO Doug McMillon and will serve in what the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer called an “elevated role.” Walmart’s heads of technology for its U.S.,  Sam’s Club and international divisions will report to Kumar when he assumes his new role, effective July 8.

Photograph courtesy of Walmart

Jeremy King, Walmart’s former U.S. chief technology officer, left the company earlier this year to join Pinterest.

In a memo, McMillon said Kumar would set technical strategy, and lead the team in building tools and systems to digitally transform business operations.

“The technology of today and tomorrow enables us to serve our customers and associates in ways that weren’t previously possible. We want to take full advantage of those opportunities,” McMillon said in a statement. “Suresh has a unique understanding of the intersection of technology and retail, including supply chain, and has deep experience in advertising, cloud and machine learning. And, he has a track record of working in partnership with business teams to drive results.”

For his part, Kumar praised Walmart as “one of the great success stories in how a company evolves over time to serve the changing needs of its customers, and today, it is in the midst of a very exciting digital transformation. With more than 11,000 stores, a high-growth e-commerce business and more than 2 million associates worldwide, the potential for technology to help people at scale is unparalleled, and I am excited to be part of this.”

Kumar was most recently at Google, serving as VP and general manager of display, video, app ads and analytics. Prior to Google, he was the corporate VP of Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure and operations. Kumar spent 15 years at Amazon in various leadership roles, including VP of technology for retail systems and operations, and he led Amazon’s retail supply chain and inventory management systems. Before Amazon, he was a research staff member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center.

Kumar holds a Ph.D. in engineering from Princeton University in New Jersey and a Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.