Ron Avnur has been working in the fields of database management systems and enterprise search engines for over 10 years, and joined MarkLogic Corporation in 2003 prior to its initial product release. His experience includes both Silicon Valley start-ups and large enterprise software companies, where he has specialized in database query optimization and performance. Ron held engineering, consulting and pre-sales positions at Cohera, a distributed database startup eventually acquired by PeopleSoft. In other positions, he helped lead business development at Business Layers, a security software startup acquired by Netegrity and also served as a programmer at Informix Software, which was purchased by IBM in 2001. Ron holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science and a master’s degree in computer science from University of California, Berkeley.