MariaDB Corporation today announced the appointment of Amir Ameri as Chief Financial Officer, and Paul Jenkinson as Board Member and Audit Committee Chair. 

The leadership appointments come at a time of rapid growth for the company. Built to address customers' overwhelming desire for a next-generation cloud database offering, MariaDB SkySQL delivers a full-featured MariaDB cloud experience for production workloads. Available since March 2020, SkySQL has been used by customers in 48 countries. Overall, MariaDB added four times the number of new customers this fiscal year compared to the previous fiscal year. 

The cloud database market is the fastest-growing segment of the overall $55 billion database market, growing at 68% compared with 32% on-prem growth. With the launch of SkySQL, MariaDB dramatically increases its addressable market and growth potential.

"I'm excited to bring Amir Ameri and Paul Jenkinson on board to serve critical roles in our financial operations supporting our rapidly growing cloud business," said Michael Howard, CEO at MariaDB Corporation. "Amir has a strong background of growing SaaS companies and he'll validate we have the financial process in place for our next phase of business growth. We've also formed a new audit committee that will be led by Paul to ensure we are living up to the highest financial integrity standards followed by public companies, preparing us for our next chapter." 

"I'm thrilled to join MariaDB and be part of a fast-growing cloud company," said Amir Ameri, CFO at MariaDB Corporation. "Given the strong 2020 momentum and the outlook for SkySQL and MariaDB as a whole in 2021 and beyond, I'm looking forward to bringing my extensive SaaS and enterprise technology company experience to bear."

Amir is an accomplished financial professional with more than 25 years of leadership experience in finance and management. He is a dedicated leader with experience growing both public and private innovative software companies, including significant experience in fundraising. Amir has held executive positions at several SaaS and enterprise technology companies, including CollabNet VersionOne, Precise Software and EnergyConnect. He earned an MBA in finance and management from Stanford School of Business and a bachelor's degree in economics from Stanford University.

Paul is a senior executive with decades of global corporate finance and leadership experience across business sectors. In addition to serving on the MariaDB Corporation board of directors, Paul serves as a board member of AIVITA Biomedical, where he also chairs the audit committee. Previously, Paul served as CFO of Kite Pharma and has held senior roles in the U.S. and Europe at Allergan and The Black & Decker Corporation.