Nutanix Engineering Superstar Manoj Agarwal Leaves

As Nutanix continues its search for a new CEO, the company’s longtime engineering leader Manoj Agarwal is also leaving.

“I hired more than 500 engineers globally and worked with the biggest names in technology as Nutanix evolved into a global cloud-technology powerhouse,” said Agarwal, senior vice president of engineering and general manager of Hybrid Cloud at Nutanix, in a LinkedIn post today. “Seven years at Nutanix leave me grateful for working with so many talented people who do remarkable things.”

Agarwal, who was frequently highlighted onstage during large conferences such as the Nutanix annual .NEXT event, is responsible for the Nutanix hybrid cloud infrastructure, Xi Services, Nutanix Clusters on public cloud, and networking and platform engineering, according to his LinkedIn profile.

[Related: Nutanix Bests VMware As Hyperconverged Software Leader]

He joined Nutanix, which was founded in 2009, in 2013 as senior director of engineering. Agarwal moved into his senior vice president and general manager role at the San Jose, Calif.-based company in early 2019.

Agarwal said working at Nutanix was a “dream job,” but he’s leaving in order to start a new company. “I’m bidding farewell to Nutanix—giving up a dream job to chase a lifelong dream of starting a company,” he said.

In a statement to CRN, Nutanix said Agarwal was a “important member” in contributing to the company’s success over the past seven years. “He is part of a strong bench of engineering leaders within the company who drive world-class innovation. The executive team has full confidence that Nutanix is well positioned for the future as we continue to execute on our vision of making IT infrastructure so simple that it becomes invisible,” Nutanix said in the statement.

Nutanix has yet to name a replacement for Agarwal.

Agarwal has received more than 150 comments on his LinkedIn post today announcing his departure.

The departure of Agarwal comes as Nutanix searches to replace its co-founder and CEO Dheeraj Pandey, who elevated the company into a $1.6 billion hyperconverged and cloud software superstar.

In August, Pandey disclosed his plans to retire upon the selection and appointment of a new CEO. A CEO search committee of the Nutanix board of directors is looking for a replacement. The board will identify and interview candidates with the assistance of a leading global executive search firm.

“All 6,000 of our employees, all 18,000 of our customers and all 10,000-plus of our channel partners, I know they’re carry the torch forward,” said Pandey in an interview with CRN. “I think they’ll understand that this is an extremely personal thing, where, this pandemic did make me think a lot about what really matters.”

Agarwal thanked Pandey as well as other top Nutanix executives and former Nutanix leaders for pushing his internal innovation engine.

“I owe the biggest thanks to Dheeraj Pandey, Ajeet Singh, Sunil Potti and Sudheesh Nair. They made me believe in the future of cloud and invisible infrastructure. And they helped me believe I could turn this promise into reality,” said Agarwal. “I’ve been learning to build since my father started a new business in India. He put me to work at age 12, starting me on the path to nurturing a deep empathy with builders, customers and partners. My next venture explores bridging the gaps in empathy between these key players.”