SWARM Engineering adds two former Microsoft execs to leadership team

SWARM Engineering, INC, the innovative provider of food supply chain optimization software, announced two strategic hires to its leadership team.

Andy Mouacdie joins SWARM as Chief Revenue Officer and Shiyi Pickrell joins as Chief Data Scientist. As SWARM continues to scale its business, Mouacdie and Pickrell will play critical roles in furthering SWARM's mission to optimize the food supply chain industry using artificial intelligence and machine learning.

"I'm delighted with our new additions, the experience and knowledge they provide demonstrates how serious we are about bringing the best talent to transform our customers operational performance," said Anthony Howcroft, CEO and Co-founder of SWARM. "Andy and I worked together for five years at Microsoft, where he led a worldwide team for large-scale data and analytics. I've seen his work ethic, a passion for his customers and team, and I know the tremendous value he delivers, from first-hand experience. And, as our new Chief Data Scientist, Shiyi has a tremendous academic background including a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Southern California, and an MBA from the University of Washington. With nearly a decade of experience leading data science and machine learning teams at Microsoft and Amazon, she has the practical experience to deliver pragmatic solutions, too. I'm incredibly excited to see the progress we can make with our AI platform under her guidance."

In his new role as Chief Revenue Officer, Mouacdie will be responsible for SWARM's customer and partner relationships, and in building out the SWARM sales team. Mouacdie joins SWARM from DFIN, where he was most recently VP of Sales. He brings to SWARM thirty plus years high tech sales experience selling to Fortune 2000 clients worldwide.

"I am thrilled to be joining the SWARM Engineering team!  The SWARM solution delivers measurable value to our customers, saving them time and money while optimizing critical supply chain processes that improve their business," says Andy. "As the CRO, I will build our pipeline, hire a seasoned sales team, and establish key partnerships to scale the business."

Pickrell comes to SWARM from Microsoft, where she served as Director, Machine Learning & Data Science. There, she led a large team to apply ML/AI to power internal workforces and infrastructure to work smarter and more securely.

"Food supply chain has huge potential to transform itself to be more sustainable and environmentally friendly by leveraging ML & AI. I am excited to join SWARM to tackle complex problems using cutting edge technologies like deep reinforcement learning," says Shiyi, Chief Data Scientist at SWARM. "As the CDS, I will focus on automating the mapping of customer problems to algorithmic solutions using advanced ML and also lead SWARM's strategic collaboration with our world-class academic advisors in AI.

With three SWARM C-level execs having a background at Microsoft, it would not be a surprise to see closer ties developing between the startup and the Seattle-based software vendor. "We are already using Microsoft Azure as a foundation for our core platform," Anthony said, "and we are looking at other areas to partner."