Google has appointed Entersekt CTO Christiaan Brand as product manager for security and identity teams.
Brand is one of the five founders of Entersekt, a South African-based authentication solutions provider.
As part of the product management team, Brand will be responsible for bridging the technical and business worlds as he designs services that keep customers secure.
Brand says he will work with teams from engineering, sales, marketing, and finance, with a bias toward action. "I guess the primary job of a product manager is to break down complex problems into steps that drive product development forward at Google speed."
His immediate goal is to simply get to know the organisation, the projects and the people inside Google.
"Google has more than 57 000 full-time employees (according to business insider, 17 July 2015) and there's a lot of cross-pollination going on between different teams. I believe that's part of Google's success.
"From a long-term perspective it would be wonderful to have a measureable impact on the security and user experience of Google's user base."
According to Brand, one of his long-term goals is to find a way to help South African start-ups scale globally.
He points out many other countries already have state-sponsored programmes set up to help drive this growth but SA is lagging behind.
There's a growing influx of venture capital into Stellenbosch, but unfortunately there's still a huge disconnect with the Venture Capital community in Silicon Valley, says Brand.
Many start-ups still have to "go it on their own" and figure out their own growth path into the global market, he adds.
One of his goals is to help bring SA (to start, specifically Stellenbosch-based start-ups) closer to Silicon Valley and set up a repeatable structure for funding and expansion, explains Brand.
Schalk Nolte, CEO of Entersekt, says Brand has been based in San Francisco for a couple of years now in order to foster Entersekt's relationships with prospective partners in North America.
Being embedded in Silicon Valley, an amazing opportunity came his way to fulfil a lifelong dream of working for Google, says Nolte.
"It's a fantastic role and one that he will without a doubt excel at, just as he did at Entersekt. In my view, his move also speaks to the quality of people we have at Entersekt.
"Losing someone of Christiaan's calibre has an impact, there's no denying it. We will miss his energy and intellect."
Brand will continue to be involved with Entersekt in an advisory capacity, so he is not disappearing by any means, says Nolte.
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