# Arjun Narayan

> Arjun Narayan is the co-founder and former CEO of Materialize and a Venture Partner at Amplify Partners. Previously an engineer at Cockroach Labs, he holds a computer science Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in computer science and economics from Williams College. His work connects distributed-systems research, practical database design and investment in technical founders.

- **Role:** Venture Partner at Amplify Partners
- **Organizations:** Amplify Partners, Materialize, Cockroach Labs
- **Education:** B.A., Computer Science and Economics, Williams College, Ph.D., Computer Science, University of Pennsylvania
- **Known for:** Co-founded Materialize, bringing dataflow research to a SQL database product., Led Materialize as founding CEO through its 2021 Series C., Contributed to SQL execution and performance engineering at Cockroach Labs.

## Career timeline

- **2012** — Read Google’s Spanner paper during his doctorate; later identified it as an influence on his database career.
- **2014** — Co-authored Compute Globally, Act Locally with Antonis Papadimitriou and Andreas Haeberlen.
- **2016-2018** — Worked at Cockroach Labs on SQL query execution and performance; Amplify dates his departure to late 2018.
- **2019** — Co-founded Materialize and served as founding CEO.
- **2021** — Materialize announced a $60 million Series C, taking company funding above $100 million.
- **2024-04** — Became VP of Engineering at Materialize as Nate Stewart became CEO; remained on the board.
- **2025-02** — Joined Amplify Partners as Venture Partner.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Materialize, bringing dataflow research to a SQL database product.
- Led Materialize as founding CEO through its 2021 Series C.
- Contributed to SQL execution and performance engineering at Cockroach Labs.
- Earned a Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Pennsylvania.
- Angel investments include Hightouch and Modal, according to Amplify.

## Latest updates

- **2025-02** — Amplify Partners announced his appointment as Venture Partner on February 4, 2025.
- **2024-06** — Published an essay on the developer costs of weak database isolation.
- **2024-04** — Materialize announced his move from CEO to VP of Engineering, with continued board service.

## Links

- Website: https://www.arjunnarayan.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjunravinarayan/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/narayanarjun
- GitHub: https://github.com/rjnn

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/arjun-narayan
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-22