Jon-Rav G Shende
Chief Technology Officer at Thales
United States
About Jon-Rav G Shende
Jon-Rav G Shende is Chief Technology Officer at Thales. Location: United States.
Global technology executive and CTO with a career built around transformation;modernizing complex environments, rebuilding operating models, creating new capabilities,& turning technology investment into measurable operating & commercial outcomes. With a start as an engineer,over the past 15+ years, this grew into leadership across global technology operations, cloud, cybersecurity, data, product and platform strategy, with digital transformation,to include,security engineering & CISO responsibilities. I’ve led organizations of 800+ professionals,managed transformation portfolios from $5M to $100M+,& worked across regulated environments at Ernst & Young,Savvis/CenturyLink/Lumen,Cognizant and Thales.Work spanned global data centers, hundreds of applications,tens of thousands of users,and $50M+ multiyear programs with major hyperscalers. Commercial responsibility has also been part of my journey: contributing to revenue targets, building partner ecosystems,shaping go-to-market strategy,& working with clients & executive teams to turn technology capability into commercial growth was a combination that shaped how I lead. Technology strategy cannot sit apart from execution, as architecture has to work in the real world.Operations have to scale,with security and governance embedded to support the business,& investment has to show up in outcomes. AI is the latest extension of that work,not a departure from it. My experience with machine learning and AI spans roughly eight years,from early ML through LLMs, generative AI & agentic systems. Todays challenge is no longer simply deploying models. It’s integrating AI into operating environments where data, identity, applications, infrastructure, security, policy, economics and customer outcomes intersect. With AI, my focus is not only where AI exists, but what it can access, whose authority it operates under, what actions it can take, how policy is enforced, what happened at runtime,& whether execution remained within approved boundaries. This is driving my work on Data & AI, platform & product strategy, security,data protection & post-quantum readiness, which keeps me close to engineering, architecture,customers & commercial execution Success has been leveraging experience from several sides of the table:engineer, architect,operator,security leader,product and business builder,executive adviser & CTO to drive target outcomes Outcome that take strategy into execution, scale under real operating conditions,& connect engineering decisions with customer value & business objectives
Skills
Additional experience
Exec Advisory Board
ForenSec Global Inc
Started July 2024
Education
- Undergrad, University of Oxford
- Master of Science - MS, Royal Holloway, University of London