Wayfair beefs up tech leadership with former Target, Google execs

Wayfair has added two experienced technologists to its bench.

The direct-to-consumer home furnishings giant has appointed Ashwin Rao as chief science officer, and Niraj Nagrani as VP of global supplier marketplace, pricing, catalog and merchandising technologies. Both report to Wayfair’s incoming chief technology officer, Fiona Tan, who will succeed Jim Miller on March 1. 

The appointments were announced days after Sean Halligan, a former Nike and Target executive, joined the company as chief global supply chain officer.

Prior to joining Wayfair, Rao, from March 2016 to January 2022, served as VP of artificial intelligence at Target Corp., where he led the chain’s global AI and data science teams in developing products and solutions for supply chain, merchandising, search, recommendations and marketing.  

In his new role, Rao will help accelerate the company’s continued growth through technological innovation fueled by machine learning, mathematical modeling and algorithms that further strengthen the shopping experience. He will continue as adjunct professor at Stanford University, bringing the latest academic insights to Wayfair’s technology, the company said.

Nagrani has more than two decades of tech leadership, most recently serving as VP of engineering at Google, where he drove initiatives to deliver machine learning, artificial intelligence, mobile, web, and cloud tech solutions across Google consumer and developer products.  

Nagrani will oversee Wayfair’s merchandising and supplier experiences, driving innovation to enhance the company’s global supplier catalog, merchandising, and pricing systems while also creating the best-in-class web/mobile experiences and data insights for suppliers

“Technology underpins everything we do at Wayfair,” said Tan. “As an e-commerce and supply chain leader with suppliers and operations around the world, Wayfair is at the forefront of solving some of the most sophisticated and complex technological challenges facing retail. Ashwin and Niraj bring valuable expertise to the leadership team as we work together to drive the future evolution of our customer experience across online and physical retail.”

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Wayfair generated $14.1 billion in net revenue for the year ended September 30, 2021. It is based in Boston, with operations throughout North America and Europe.