Ghanbari joins company on heels of newly rebuilt exchange to accelerate company innovation and omnichannel growth
Index Exchange Inc. (Index), one of the world’s largest independent ad exchanges, announced today the hiring of Ray Ghanbari as chief technology officer (CTO). The announcement comes just weeks after Index’s debut of a completely rebuilt exchange platform, designed to increase efficiency and provide the ability to scale and innovate in new channels and formats for the company’s valued media owner and buyer customers. Ghanbari will oversee the company’s engineering, IT, and infrastructure organizations and will be focused on building solutions that drive the company closer to its mission of accelerating the ad technology evolution. Ghanbari will report to Index’s president and CEO, Andrew Casale.
“As we enter into Index’s next phase of accelerated growth, we’re excited to build atop our modernized platform to tackle large-scale industry challenges,” said Casale. “Having Ray at the forefront of our engineering and technical organization will further our efforts to push beyond the status quo, and his leadership will be critical to ensuring our customers are future-proofed for our ever-changing industry.”
Ghanbari was most recently CTO of Omnitracs (now part of Solera Holdings), a fleet intelligence platform providing expertise and innovation in transportation data science, AI, and machine learning technologies. In addition, he ran the North American engineering organization at Solera. Having previously served as a technology executive for companies like FICO, UnitedHealth Group, Overture/Yahoo!, and several high-growth early- and mid-stage companies, Ghanbari brings to Index deep expertise in engineering, corporate strategy, and product management.
“Index is well-positioned and poised to successfully build and innovate as the ad tech industry continues to embrace omnichannel,” said Ghanbari. “I’m looking forward to joining a company with such a rock-solid foundation, and one that has established itself as an industry trailblazer from both a relationship and technical perspective.”
Ghanbari is based out of San Diego and will manage Index’s engineering centers of excellence in Boston, Mass., and Canada (in Toronto, Montreal, and Kitchener-Waterloo). After closing them due to the global pandemic, Index recently reopened many of its 13 global offices—expanding its presence in both New York City and Toronto—and will continue to prioritize fostering a culture where teams and talent can come together, no matter their location.
Ghanbari replaces Marc Staveley, who served as Index’s CTO for three years. Staveley will retire at the end of the year.
Index has nearly 50 open technical roles at present, including 45 in Engineering. Please visit the careers page for more information.
