Wish Appoints Farhang Kassaei as Chief Technology Officer

Former Google Executive to Drive Enhancement of Wish’s Core Product Suite and the Creation of New Technology Solutions

ContextLogic Inc., one of the world’s largest mobile ecommerce platforms, announced the appointment of Farhang Kassaei, former Senior Director at Google, to the newly created position of Chief Technology Officer, effective July 12, 2021.

“Farhang will drive our technology development at a pivotal moment in our journey and lead the enhancement of Wish’s existing product offerings, as well as the creation of a whole suite of exciting new technology solutions”

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Mr. Kassaei will report to Wish Founder and CEO Piotr Szulczewski and will be responsible for Wish’s core Marketplace as well as Engineering Product & Infrastructure, Data & Relevancy, Wish Local and Product Procurement. He will also drive the development of new technology solutions.

Prior to joining Wish, Mr. Kassaei served as Senior Director of Software Engineering at Google and since 2014, oversaw the development and roll-out of full-stack commerce capabilities across Search, YouTube, Assistant and Local, as well as Google Express local shopping and delivery products. He also oversaw the infrastructure enabling Google Product Listing Ads (PLA) globally.

“Farhang will drive our technology development at a pivotal moment in our journey and lead the enhancement of Wish’s existing product offerings, as well as the creation of a whole suite of exciting new technology solutions,” said Wish Founder and CEO Piotr Szulczewski. “Farhang is an experienced leader, and his deep understanding of software, systems, ecommerce ecosystems and product development will be invaluable to us as we continue to execute on our vision and strategic roadmap. His work on logistics and scaling merchant onboarding at Google are particularly relevant and demonstrative of the type of experience that will have a positive impact on our core business. We’re delighted to be strengthening our senior leadership team with someone of Farhang’s caliber and look forward to his contributions to our future success.”

“This is an exciting opportunity to join a rapidly growing business with a clear vision of making ecommerce affordable and accessible to everyone,” said Mr. Kassaei. “My aim is to help enrich the consumer experience and make our open commerce ecosystem more viable for merchants, all while building out complementary new features to strengthen Wish’s position as one of the preeminent platforms for value-conscious shoppers.”

Before Google, Mr. Kassaei previously spent more than 10 years at eBay Inc. where he held multiple leadership positions, including Chief Architect for the core marketplace. During his tenure, he led many key initiatives across eBay, including global identity, buyer/merchant risk and verification, eBay’s API platform, eBay/PayPal’s integration and the migration of eBay to a microservices architecture.

Prior to joining eBay, he led engineering teams in companies creating large 3D collaboration software for manufacturing and processing, and underwriting software for the financial industry. Mr. Kassaei holds an MSc in Electrical and Computer Engineering from The Ohio State University and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business.

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