Pinterest Hires Long-Time Apple Execs to Lead Engineering and Product Design

You might think that with its $5 billion valuation, Pinterest would have its senior management largely set. Not so.

The company today announced two big hires: First, Michael Lopp, who most recently spent four years at Palantir and before that managed engineering at Apple for nine years on products like Mac OS X. He’ll be head of engineering, filling a hole left late last year with the departure of Jon Jenkins. Second is Bob Baxley, who directed design for many Apple products, including ones Lopp also worked on like the company’s online store. Baxley will be head of product design and research.

Besides their long tenures in Silicon Valley, Lopp and Baxley have in common the fact that they have prominent public presences outside of work, which is especially rare at Apple.

Lopp is well-known as “Rands” online, where he blogs and writes the daily Web comic Jerkcity. He wrote the engineering management books “Managing Humans” and “Being Geek.”

Baxley is also an author, having written the well-received design book “Making the Web Work.”

Meanwhile, Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp will keep his position of head of design, while Baxley focuses on groups related to product design and user experience research.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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