Today, we’re thrilled to welcome the newest member of our leadership team: Shariq Rizvi, Vice President of Ads Product and Engineering. With more than 15 years of engineering and adtech experience, Rizvi brings deep expertise and leadership to Reddit at a pivotal time for the ads business.

In 2018, the entire company rallied to make Reddit more welcoming and accessible to users and advertisers. Our teams built Reddit’s first ads platform, launched new native ad formats and rolled out updated targeting, reporting and insight tools for marketers. For users, we completed and delivered the long-awaited desktop redesign.

“Throughout 2018, we’ve demonstrated the value of engaging with our community––and new inventory like native mobile and native video ads in the redesign have showcased the opportunity for branded engagement,” said Reddit CEO Steve Huffman. “ While video and engagement campaigns will always remain a focus for Reddit’s Brand Partnerships team, Rizvi’s hire represents an additional investment in a more robust, performance-driven suite of advertising solutions for marketers in 2019.”

A proven leader in adtech and performance

Rizvi received a M.S. in Computer Science from The University of California, Berkeley after studying Computer Science & Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay. After leaving Berkeley, Rizvi began his career as an engineer at Google in 2006, working on products including web search, App Engine and the Google Calculator. After two and a half years, Rizvi left Google to co-found his first company, Dasient, an enterprise startup backed by Google Ventures. In 2012, Twitter acquired Dasient to power the security for its own online advertising system.



Following Twitter’s acquisition of Dasient, Rizvi co-led efforts to scale Twitter’s early advertising operation into a multi-billion dollar business. Between 2012-2016, Rizvi co-launched the company’s performance ads business, built out multiple engineering teams from the ground up and helped Twitter’s Ads team through the company’s IPO. After four years at Twitter, Rizvi was the co-founder at the enterprise startup, Netsil, which was acquired by Nutanix in 2018 to complement the company’s Enterprise Cloud Operating System.

Leading Reddit’s investment in performance

In his new role at Reddit, Rizvi will report to Steve Huffman and lead the Monetization and Ads Product team to build out Reddit’s performance and direct response offerings for advertisers in 2019.

“Reddit offers a powerful solution to the human need for true community and authentic communication, which I’ve experienced first-hand,” said Rizvi. “Aside from the clear value for users and advertisers, there’s also an obvious match between my knowledge, experience, skillset and what Reddit needs right now––to scale up the online ads platform. I’m eager to help build the business with this team.”

Rizvi leadership will go beyond growing the business. As VP of Ads Product and Engineering, he will help inspire a new stage of growth for our business and advertiser solutions.