It was just about a year ago that we wrote about Square nabbing engineer Bob Lee. As we noted at the time, the man affectionately known on Twitter and elsewhere as “Crazy Bob” was quite the catch — he had been leading the core library development of Android while at Google. But he clearly saw an even bigger opportunity with the mobile payment startup. And on Friday that vision was repaid as Lee was promoted to be the company’s first Chief Technology Officer.
Lee was originally brought on board to lead the development of the at the time still-in-the-works Android app. That app came in May of last year, alongside the iPhone version going live in the App Store. Communications Director Kay Luo also tells us that he’s been helping a lot with recruitment, hiring, server and API design, product design, security, business relations, and marketing. Now Lee will oversee all the technology that the company is working on.
And Lee’s ascension as the company’s first CTO also marks its third C-level executive. Lee joins COO Keith Rabois and CEO Jack Dorsey on that level. Dorsey has obviously been in the news a lot recently for his renewed commitment towards Twitter, the other company he helped found, but he is staying on and committed to Square as well.
“Square does believe in promoting from within,” Luo says, clearly in full-on recruitment mode. The company is growing quickly after kicking off the year with a big $27.5 million round (at a valuation around $200 million) — FUD and all.