John Vandermay returns to the Canadian tech industry as Lightspeed's Chief Technology Officer

Vandermay's product development strategy will spotlight innovations, customer acquisitions and retention for the technology disruptor that currently powers more than 50,000 independents

MONTRÉAL, Nov. 28, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Lightspeed, a powerful cloud-based point of sale system for retailers and restaurants, announces the appointment of John Vandermay to the role of Chief Technology Officer. Vandermay's nomination comes in the midst of incredible growth for Lightspeed, following the announcement that the company closed a US $166 million (C $207 million) series D round investment. In 2016, the retail tech innovator launched its omnichannel product, seamlessly merging in-store POS, eCommerce and mobile, empowering customers to sell anywhere, at any time.

With over 25 years of software engineering and global leadership experience, John Vandermay joins Lightspeed from Visto (formerly Collective), an advertising technology company in NYC backed by Accel, Greycroft, and iNovia. While at Visto as CTO, Vandermay lead the transformation of the company to an advertising media service provider to a technology platform by building a breakthrough SaaS enterprise advertising platform that seamlessly provided transparency and interoperability between the myriad of ad technologies. Before Visto, John spent three years at Dassault Systèmes GEOVIA, where he was the Vice President of Product Development, and oversaw successful global engineering and product management.

In addition to executive leadership roles in engineering at companies like Cognos and BlackBerry, he also led Engineering and Development at Omniture, where his contributions built an analytics engine that powered more than 350k transactions / second, expanded the product portfolio to over 10 products and resulted in a successful IPO in 2006 and secondary offering in 2007, eventually leading to the sale of the company to Adobe in 2009 for $1.8 billion.

"It's incredible to welcome John back to Canada and into our Lightspeed community, at the height of growth in our development sector. John's extensive experience in software engineering and product development will make him an invaluable asset to the Lightspeed team," said Lightspeed Founder and CEO Dax Dasilva, "As a Canadian company, we're proud to be part of an innovative network of technology companies that are attracting top industry talent back to Canada."

"I am thrilled to join Lightspeed during this significant period of global growth and work alongside the team to advance development," said Vandermay. "Lightspeed is a team of innovators, whose renowned advancements in omnichannel and POS technology allows restaurants, retail entrepreneurs, and business owners to seamlessly grow and manage their businesses."

Lightspeed is also pleased to announce that John will curate a blog series entitled Lightspeed talks code. Read the first entry here.

About Lightspeed
Headquartered in Montréal, Canada, Lightspeed is the most powerful cloud-based point-of-sale solution for independent businesses, in-store and online. Nearly 50,000 retailers and restaurateurs, processing over US $15 billion in transactions annually use Lightspeed to grow and manage their business. Lightspeed can be found in more than 100 countries, powering favorite local businesses, where the community goes to shop and dine. Founded in 2005, Lightspeed has grown to nearly 600 employees, with global offices in Canada, USA, Europe, and Australia.

For more information, please visit: http://www.lightspeedhq.com,
Facebook:  Facebook.com/LightspeedHQ, Twitter: @LightspeedHQ and Instagram: @LightspeedHQ.

SOURCE Lightspeed POS Montreal