Keep your data close and your engineers closer?
That’s a lesson Square may be learning, as the mobile payments company saw one its higher profile engineers – Rob von Behren – leave for Braintree.
Most notable for his work as a co-founder of Google Wallet, von Behren will become Braintree’s lead engineer at its San Francisco office and focus on building out its mobile commerce solutions – including its one-touch payment platform Venmo.
“Rob is among a handful of the very best engineers in mobile and he will help us to continue leading the way in mobile commerce innovation,” Bill Ready, Braintree’s CEO said in a release. “The best online and mobile commerce experiences run on Braintree because we have exceptional engineers like Rob building the payments tools they’d want to use for their own applications.”
And according to Braintree, the company’s focus on mobile is quite serious. The release announcing von Behren’s hire highlights that Braintree now handles more than $2 billion in mobile transactions in annual payment volume, which accounts for about one-fourth of its total APV. The release also highlights Fab, Uber and LivingSocial as some of Braintree’s high profile mobile clients.
“Joining Braintree gives me the opportunity to solve real problems companies and people face when transacting online and on mobile devices,” said Rob von Behren, lead engineer, Braintree. “Braintree’s approach to mobile is spot-on with the vision I have imagined for the future of payments. It’s exciting to be part of realizing the potential.”
Von Behren appears to have made no mention of why he left Square after one year at the company, but he’s hardly alone in his exodus. As TechCrunch points out, Square has recently seen a string of notable employees leave the company, such as former head of growth Jared Fliesler, former COO Keith Rabois and former director of product Megan Quinn.
The TechCrunch piece also points out that while von Behren’s background may be with Google Wallet, this doesn’t mean Braintree will be shifting towards a strategy based on NFC.
“Rob’s passion was never NFC,” Ready told TechCrunch.
What do you think? Do Square’s notable departures give you pause? How big of a get was this for Braintree? Let us know in the comments below.
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