Meet Sagi Dudai, JFrog’s New EVP of Product and Engineering

As JFrog continues to grow, so does our team! We are honored to welcome seasoned technology leader, Sagi Dudai, as our new Executive Vice President of Product and Engineering. In this key role, Sagi will accelerate DevOps innovation and fuel our continued R&D growth globally, building on our exciting momentum in 2021.

Sagi joins JFrog with more than 25 years of global experience ranging from large-scale software Platform-as-a-Service to AI and machine learning. Most recently, he served as Chief Technology Officer at Vonage, where he drove R&D efforts and the technology vision, architecture and design of all technology and product development for this $1.3B revenue organization.

Sagi brings rich leadership experience and a proven track record in building cloud native, large-scale SaaS platforms using modern-day technologies. JFrog’s Liquid Software vision requires trailblazers with proven experience and passion for innovating and building solutions that will serve tomorrow’s software world. Sagi’s leadership will help JFrog continue to leap forward and deliver on new levels of value to the DevOps community, our customers and partners.

Q&A: Sagi Dudai on DevOps innovation, technology trends, the importance of teamwork, and his ideal dinner companion

To get to know Sagi a little better and introduce him to the JFrog community, we asked him a few questions about himself, his career, technology, passions, and his thoughts about the future of DevOps and software delivery. 

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your career journey.

First and foremost, I’m a husband and father of four amazing children. I’m also a triathlete (though not a very good one!)

In terms of my career, I’ve spent the last nine years at Vonage, serving as the global Chief Technology Officer for the last five. I oversaw R&D, leading a team of over 1,000 developers and DevOps engineers spread all over the world, located in San Francisco, New Jersey, Atlanta, India, London, Barcelona, Madrid, Tel Aviv, and more. Together, we brought cutting edge, innovative solutions to market, such as Vonage Business Cloud, and others. In addition, I led the integration of nine technology acquisitions at Vonage.

Prior to Vonage, I was Vice President of Research and Development at Fring, Director of Research, Development and Delivery at Telmap (now part of Intel), as well as Chief Architect at Mercury, later acquired by HP. I have a Master of Business Administration degree from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Recanati Business School at Tel Aviv University in business management and computer science.

What attracted you to JFrog? What are you most excited about?

We know software is the key driver behind all of our lives in this digital age of “connected-everything,” and that the speed, security and maturity of how organizations deliver applications to market is a key competitive advantage and value driver for businesses today. I wanted to be part of the company that is powering software delivery for thousands of  organizations across literally every vertical—from startups and small teams to Fortune 100.

I love JFrog’s Liquid Software vision. Tomorrow’s software world requires that enterprises be able to deploy and update software securely, seamlessly and continuously across the globe—and JFrog is launching us into that future. I truly believe JFrog has the opportunity to become one of the greatest software companies of all-time.

I’m excited to work with the team at JFrog. Everyone I’ve met is smart, fun and passionate about what they do. I’m excited to be joining Frog at this time of rapid growth and momentum—JFrog still has the energy and agility of a startup, but is scaling quickly and making moves in the industry.

What are some of the technology trends that you’re following in the market? Where do you see the industry going?

We’re seeing every business become a software company—which means, eventually, that every business becomes a DevOps company. Marc Andreessen says “software is eating the world” and he’s right. As digital transformation impacts each and every industry, software is now a pivotal part of our lives, our economy, and our businesses. 

At the same time, I agree with Peter Bendor-Samuel’s point that “services are eating software.” Companies aren’t buying software anymore, they’re buying the service the software delivers—the use of the software. And we want those services delivered as a Cloud-SaaS experience to achieve economies of scale.

The industry is headed toward all cloud native. As we aim for faster and faster software delivery, cloud native and loosely coupled architectures allow us to pick up the pace while ensuring scalability, resiliency and autonomy.

I’m also following the evolution of AI—which I believe has the power to revolutionize many aspects of our industry, driving automation, enabling new applications and user experiences, and improving our decision making and therefore time-to-value.

Lastly, I believe the DevOps industry is built on a culture of collaboration—and that culture will determine its future as well. In the words of Peter Drucker, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” When we, as teams, take the values of DevOps to heart—communication, experimentation, continuous learning, accountability and a collaborative spirit—we’ll take the industry to new heights.

What are the key challenges you hear from enterprises around software delivery at scale, and what do you think we—as an industry and at JFrog—need to focus on to realize the vision of Liquid Software?

To accelerate software delivery at scale, you first need to enable collaboration. So many organizations today are distributed—particularly post-pandemic—so supporting your teams and all your tools to work better together is essential to deliver continuous, seamless releases.

Security is also of particular concern as we’ve seen one cybersecurity incident after another come to light in recent months. Too many enterprises take a fragmented, piecemeal approach to analyzing their applications for vulnerabilities or possible security breaches. In reality, to keep their deliverables trustworthy, they need to achieve complete visibility into the end-to-end lifecycle of development and its security and risk statuses—from source all the way to device.

In addition, automating software delivery is an increasingly important step function in our digital era. The pandemic undoubtedly sped up digital transformation—sharply increasing digital demands, causing infrastructure bottlenecks and, in some cases, failures. Eliminating manual, inefficient processes, automation relieves these challenges, allowing enterprises to stay resilient and support increasingly competitive, demanding, and large scale operations.

On a personal note, throughout your career, what have you learned that serves as your north star, that you wish you had known when you started? Advice you’d share with other technology and product leaders?

The most important thing I’ve learned over the years is that your team is everything. Two quotes that always guide me are: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants,” and “A players bring A players. B players bring C players.” 

The lesson here is to choose your team carefully. Finding the right people can take time, but it’s always worth it. Your team members are your partners in success, so make sure you have great partners—and empower them to drive innovation forward.

If you could have dinner and pick the brain of anyone—dead or alive—who would that be?

Elon Musk. Would like to pick his brain to see what’s going on inside 🙂

Want to join the JFrog rocketship? Check out our openings here!