Latakoo Adds Two Veteran Cloud And SAAS Engineering Leaders

Latakoo, a video workflow company for broadcasters has made two new hires who will be leading the company’s innovation and technology team into the future: Kristen Mallory, vice president of technology, and Thomas Rognon, principal engineer.

Both Mallory and Rognon come with a track record of success at multi-billion dollar companies within the technology sector, including Workday and DoorDash. Latakoo said “Mallory and Rognon have a deep passion for helping companies grow efficiently, problem solve, and create new innovations for the end user. The two will work hand-in-hand at maximizing efficiencies at latakoo, building new systems to improve the latakoo experience for users.”

Jade Kurian, latakoo co-founder and president, said: “We’ve been recruiting both of these talents for some time. To get both Kristen and Thomas at the same time is sort of like having Batman AND Batman. And we think this duo will be just as dynamic in building cloud infrastructure that will help us scale at speed. They will make big changes and lead the dream team that we have been assembling to take latakoo into the future.”

Kristen Mallory

As vice president of technology, Mallory will lead the engineering side of latakoo. Prior to coming on board at latakoo, he was the infrastructure and security manager for Zimit, a price quote configuration company that was acquired by Workday in 2021. At Zimit, Mallory rebuilt the Amazon infrastructure, leading to enormous scaling.

A veteran of the start-up scene, Mallory has helped generate growth for companies in the travel, finance technology, and search engine marketing industries. As a senior developer and development manager for defi Solutions, a finance technology company used by automotive companies such as Toyota, Mazda and Yamaha, he helped to build a sophisticated platform that remains an industry standard nearly a decade later.

Mallory’s other roles include a leadership position with Vitacost that involved managing an integration with grocery giant Kroger. Under his leadership, Kroger began running its e-commerce website on Vitacost’s technology.

Thomas Rognon

Rognon served for five years in the U.S. Navy, winning awards for the software he wrote while serving – even though that wasn’t part of his job description as a yeoman. After leaving the military, Rognon began taking classes at the University of Texas-San Antonio, where he also worked as a researcher and was published twice. When he started receiving job offers in tech, he left the university and took a position with cybersecurity firm Def-Logix, where he wrote advanced security software.

Rognon has also worked in digital asset management for OnPrem, where he led projects for companies such as Fox and Disney, and he also led the design and implementation of a global platform supporting millions of users as the cloud architect for gambling giant Aristocrat. Rognon’s design for Aristocrat accomplished greater scale while using significantly fewer people and less infrastructure costs than a similar system. Rognon had recently started at DoorDash, when he decided to join latakoo as its principal engineer.