Former top Google techie takes his talents to Evernote

Mark Ayzenshtat once one of Google’s top engineers, is joining Evernote to lead that company’s data product push.

High-level engineers with pedigrees at tech superpowers like Google and Facebook can call their own career shots, so Ayzenshtat’s decision to go with Evernote is an endorsement of that company’s strategy. Update: It looks like Ayzenshtat may have at least one other reason to join Evernote, his half-brother, Phil Libin, is CEO of the company.

Evernote built a cloud-based platform that lets consumers store notes, photos, clips, voice snippets – the digital equivalent stuff you typically stick on post-it notes or in a bag and forget — into the cloud via their preferred devices. The difference is that Evernote makes them all searchable from whatever device you have at hand. Late last year, it claimed 20 million users and is now launching a push to embed its technology in the enterprise.

Ayzenshtat, who co-founded TellApart, an e-commerce marketing specialist, after leaving Google, announced his new gig on Twitter.

Excited to announce I'm joining @evernote to head up the Data Products team! @tellapart in great hands – staying on as advisor.—
Mark Ayzenshtat (@shtat) April 03, 2012

According to his bio at Greylock Partners, where he was an executive in residence:

[Ayzenshtat]was a Senior Software Engineer at Google, where he started and led several high profile projects including the Android Market, the AdWords API, and natural language processing improvements within the core Search Quality team. Today, the AdWords API is the world’s largest commercial API and interacts with well over half of Google’s total revenue; it went on to win the Executive Management Group award. Android later won the Founders’ Award, Google’s most prestigious project honor.

This move speaks both to Evernote’s momentum as a company and its future plans to build out its platform. Someone like Ayzensthat could pick any place to work. That he chose Evernote says something, said one long-time Google watcher. (It probably doesn’t hurt to have an in with the CEO either.)

Photo courtesy of Greylock Partners.

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