Ad tech company Rubicon Project has lost its CTO (RUBI)

November 18, 2016 at 05:11 AM EST

Ad tech firm Rubicon Project's chief technology officer Neal Richter is leaving after more than five years at the company.

A Rubicon Project spokesperson confirmed Richter's departure, adding that he will be transitioning to a "consultant advisory role through the end of the year."

Richter will be replaced by Tom Kershaw, who Rubicon Project poached in October from Google, where he was director of product management for Google ads and commerce.

Kershaw was hired into the role of chief product and engineering officer, but will now serve as chief technology and product officer.

A Rubicon Project spokesperson told Business Insider: "Neal and Tom have been working hand in hand the past several weeks aligning the teams and ensuring a seamless transition which will run through the end of the year as Neal steps into a consultant role for the company."

Richter is a well-respected data scientist with more than 20 years experience as a software engineer and technologist. He holds a PhD, more than 10 patents, and has had more than 15 scientific papers published in the fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence.

His departure will come as a blow for Rubicon Project at an already turbulent time for the company.

Earlier this month, Rubicon Project announced it was laying off 19% of its staff — 125 people — and lowered its guidance for the fourth quarter. The company blamed a "challenging" ad market and also admitted it had been slow to adopt header bidding, a new ad tech technique that helps publishers increase revenue by creating more competition amongst ad buyers in the auctions that take place for ad space.

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