# Maayan Salom

> Maayan Salom is the co-founder and CEO of Elementary, an open-source-first data observability company founded in 2021. After more than a decade in data analysis, cyber research, incident response, and team leadership, she and co-founder Or Avidov adapted reliability practices from software and security to the modern data stack. Her work now spans product strategy, growth, developer relations, and a push toward supervised AI agents that monitor, investigate, and repair data systems.

- **Role:** CEO & Co-Founder at Elementary
- **Organizations:** Elementary, Y Combinator, Sygnia, Team8, Israeli Military Intelligence Unit 8200
- **Education:** Winter 2022 batch, Y Combinator
- **Known for:** Co-founded Elementary in 2021., Built Elementary as part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 batch., Helped launch an open-source dbt package for pipeline monitoring and anomaly detection.

## Career timeline

- **2009-2011** — Worked as a data analyst in Israeli Military Intelligence Unit 8200.
- **2011-2013** — Worked as a cyber analyst in Unit 8200.
- **2013-2014** — Worked as a security researcher in Unit 8200.
- **2014-2016** — Led a team of cyber analysts in Unit 8200.
- **2016-2017** — Worked in cybersecurity incident response at Team8.
- **2017-2019** — Served as a technical team lead at Sygnia.
- **2019-2020** — Served as an incident response manager at Sygnia.
- **2020-2021** — Worked as VP Product at a stealth cybersecurity startup.
- **2021** — Co-founded Elementary with Or Avidov after researching data reliability problems with roughly 70 teams.
- **2022** — Joined Y Combinator W22 and launched Elementary’s dbt package for monitoring pipelines and detecting anomalies.
- **2024** — Elementary introduced Elementary Cloud, extending its open-source foundation for enterprise teams.
- **2025** — Elementary introduced Ella and later Elementary 2.0, expanding toward AI-assisted observability, governance, and discovery.
- **2026** — Presented Elementary’s direction toward supervised autonomous data management and published the company’s response to a compromised CLI release.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Elementary in 2021.
- Built Elementary as part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 batch.
- Helped launch an open-source dbt package for pipeline monitoring and anomaly detection.
- Reached 500 GitHub stars around the seed round in April 2022, according to Elementary’s public handbook.
- Helped grow Elementary from an open-source project into Elementary Cloud and Elementary 2.0.
- Has more than a decade of experience across data analysis, security research, incident response, and team leadership.
- Regularly writes and speaks about data observability, data quality, dbt, open source, and AI readiness.

## Latest updates

- **2026-07** — Presented an Elementary webinar with Or Avidov on autonomous data management and the role of human supervision.
- **2026-04** — Published an essay arguing that AI can free data professionals to move toward higher-value work.
- **2026-04** — Published Elementary’s incident report and remediation steps after a malicious open-source CLI release.
- **2026-03** — Published Elementary’s response to Gartner’s 2026 Market Guide for Data Observability.
- **2026-02** — Published an essay on how AI agents amplify existing data quality, discovery, and governance problems.

## Links

- Website: https://www.elementary-data.com/author/maayan-salom
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maayansa
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/MaayanSalom
- GitHub: https://github.com/Maayan-s
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xIhEE_MMcM
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ElementaryData/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/maayan-salom
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-27