Search giant Google today confirmed it had appointed local entrepreneur Alan Noble as the engineering director for its Australian operations.
Co-founder of Adelaide-based network performance vendor NetPriva, Noble has been involved with start-ups and Silicon Valley for over 20 years. NetPriva today confirmed Noble had left the company.
As director of engineering for Google Australia, Noble will manage the growth of Google's new research and development centre in Sydney, as well as be involved in the development of Google products worldwide, a spokesperson for Google told ZDNet Australia this morning.
Noble was selected as part of a "closed search", according to the spokesperson. The position was not advertised.
Noble has a history of founding successful technology companies. In 1996 he founded NetMind in the US, which was later acquired by Intellisync and then Nokia. In 2002 he joined network performance vendor Foursticks as chief technology officer. NetPriva acquired Foursticks' technology in 2005.
Noble was not yet available for interview, according to Google.
Google is currently hiring for over 40 Australian positions, including the related position of engineering manager, Google.com, based in Sydney.
Google's job advertisement for another engineering position states the executive would lead four to 10 software engineers and systems administrators, working in the "Google.com group".
"The Google.com teams are directly responsible for Google's stellar uptime record, and act as the guardians and custodians of Google's user-visible services. In this leadership role, you will be responsible for ensuring that Google users can always reach and use all of the services under your team's care," the advertisement stated.
