Astronomer Builds on Strong Customer Momentum, Appoints New SVP of R&D

NEW YORK, June 18, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Astronomer, the company behind Astro, the leading fully managed service for Apache Airflow, today announced significant company and customer momentum as demand for data orchestration tools surge to fuel data products, generative AI and faster time to insights. One year after its release, Astro is showing exceptional performance with a net revenue retention rate (NRR) of over 130%, highlighting increased use case expansion of Airflow within customer organizations. The monthly number of tasks executed on the Astro platform has also grown by 80% in the past three months.

Astronomer also announced the appointment of Christopher Lefelhocz as Senior Vice President of Research and Development. Lefelhocz brings a wealth of experience in scaling engineering teams and driving innovation in the DevSecOps and data infrastructure space. This strategic addition to the executive team underscores Astronomer's commitment to accelerating its growth and enhancing its product offerings to better serve its global customer base.

"Christopher is an experienced technologist and leader with a successful track record of building and scaling the engineering organizations that create enduring platforms used by millions of developers and tens of thousands of customers," said Andy Byron, CEO of Astronomer. "He brings a wealth of relevant experience to our commercial open source journey. I am confident that Christopher's leadership will accelerate innovation at Astronomer as we expand our platform into powering real-time data products, generative AI workflows, and beyond."

Lefelhocz joins Astronomer with more than 25 years of experience in the technology industry, having previously held leadership positions at GitLab and Rackspace. In these roles, he was instrumental in delivering groundbreaking technologies that drove significant business growth such as Gitlab's security and compliance solution and GitLab Duo, a suite of AI-powered capabilities that improve individual and team productivity. At Astronomer, Lefelhocz will be responsible for leading the globally distributed research and development teams, overseeing product development, and driving the next phase of innovation for Astro.

"Astronomer is at the forefront of helping organizations harness the full power of Apache Airflow, and I am thrilled to join such a dynamic and forward-thinking team," said Lefelhocz. "I look forward to working closely with our talented engineers and the broader Astronomer and Airflow communities to continue delivering exceptional solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers."

In addition to this exciting new hire, Astronomer is pleased to announce the promotion of Vikram Koka to Chief Strategy Officer. In his elevated role, Koka will leverage his deep expertise to guide the strategic direction of open source Airflow and forge pivotal technology partnerships. His vision and leadership will be critical in shaping the future of Airflow and enhancing its ecosystem, ensuring that Astronomer remains at the forefront of innovation in the data orchestration landscape. Astronomer also recently welcomed Matthew Fermino, VP of Global Sales, and Michael Musselman, VP of Partnerships, to its leadership team to support the company as it scales and builds on growing momentum.

Leading companies from the Fortune 10 to disruptors such as Ford, Bank of America, Rappi, and Autodesk rely on Astronomer to help run their Airflow deployments at scale, achieving improved reliability and faster innovation. Astronomer also announced today that it earned a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 65 for Astro, underscoring high customer satisfaction. 

With the addition of Christopher Lefelhocz to the leadership team and the continued success of Astro, Astronomer is poised for another year of strong growth and innovation. The company remains dedicated to empowering organizations to scale their Airflow deployments effortlessly and achieve their data-driven goals.

To learn more about open positions at Astronomer, visit: https://www.astronomer.io/careers/

About Astronomer

Astronomer designed Astro, a modern data orchestration platform, powered by Apache Airflow™. Astro enables data teams to build, run, and grow their mission-critical data pipelines on a single platform for all of their data flows. Astro dramatically reduces costs, improves developer productivity, and reliably delivers your most data-centric use cases. For more information, visit www.astronomer.io.

Apache® and Apache Airflow™ are either registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries. No endorsement by the Apache Software Foundation is implied by the use of these marks. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Astronomer