Eric Berlinberg, who spent the past decade at Amazon and was a key leader on the company’s Prime Air team, is moving on from the Seattle tech giant for a new role at Torc Robotics, a subsidiary of Daimler Truck that is developing autonomous vehicle technology for self-driving trucks.
Berlinberg led program management, business intelligence, and more for Prime Air, the drone delivery division of Amazon.
“Almost a decade ago, I stumbled into one of the most incredible professional opportunities: bringing drone delivery to the world,” Berlinberg wrote on LinkedIn. “As one of the first members of this project, it has been inspiring to be at the forefront of this development. Every day, I’ve learned from brilliant engineers, aerodynamicists, and aviators. The attention to safety at all levels, and the unwavering focus on building a safe and scalable delivery system, have always impressed me.”
Berlinberg previously was a director at Manhattan Creative Group and a product manager at Coca-Cola.
He’ll lead program management at Torc, which spun out of Virginia Tech nearly two decades ago and is focused on enabling trucks to drive autonomously between hubs in the U.S.
Amazon has spent years developing drones that can deliver packages to customers. It has missed some projections for customer deliveries but is adding more delivery sites across the U.S. and last month won a key approval from the FAA to fly the drones beyond visual line of sight.
Other key personnel changes across the Pacific Northwest tech ecosystem:
— John Montgomery, who spent more than 26 years at Microsoft and was most recently a corporate vice president, joined Meta as vice president of product management on the company’s infrastructure team. “After 25+ years at Microsoft, it’s invigorating to be starting something new!” he wrote on LinkedIn.
— Longtime marketing executive Jay Wampold joined Buildkite, a Perth, Australia-based software company. Wampold previously held marketing leadership roles at FasterBetter, Pulumi, Commerce IQ, and Cloudability. Former Chef CEO Barry Crist was named board chair of Buildkite last year.
— Michael Vogelsong, who co-founded Amazon’s Deep Learning Technologies team, joined Collaborative Robotics, the Santa Clara, Calif., company founded in 2022 by former Amazon Robotics VP and Distinguished Engineer Brad Porter that recently opened an office in Seattle.
— Katherine Bajjaliya Keileh joined Seattle-based risk intelligence startup Pendulum as head of sales. Keileh previously worked for One and EverFi.
— Whitney Ellison, former director of brand activation at Alaska Airlines, joined Starbucks as senior manager of brand marketing (coffee & culture). She previously worked at Hightower and CenturyLink.
— Aaron Kornblum is departing his role as global general counsel at BYJU’S Learning, part of the India-based edtech company BYJU. Kornblum was a former Microsoft manager and former general counsel at Bungie.
— Mark Musburger is stepping down as CFO of Seattle-area marketing software company Banzai. Musburger joined the company in 2022; Banzai went public late last year. He previously worked at Avalara, Identity Digital, and Corvee.
