# Shachar Fienblit

> Shachar Fienblit is an Israeli engineer, technology executive and co-founder of VAST Data. After working on storage systems at IBM and leading engineering at Kaminario, he joined VAST in 2017 and became its Chief R&D Officer, overseeing global engineering as the company expanded from a storage challenger into a data and computing platform for AI infrastructure.

- **Role:** Co-Founder and Chief R&D Officer at VAST Data
- **Organizations:** VAST Data, Kaminario, IBM
- **Nationality:** Israeli
- **Education:** B.Sc. in Computer Science, University of Haifa
- **Known for:** Co-founded VAST Data and leads its global engineering organization as Chief R&D Officer., Helped develop the architecture that VAST expanded into a unified data and computing platform for AI workloads., Named as an inventor on numerous storage-system patents covering subjects including deduplication, backup relationships, write atomicity, erasure coding and power management.

## Career timeline

- **2000** — Graduated in the University of Haifa’s first computer science cohort.
- **2000-2008** — Worked at IBM as a storage development architect and contributed to research and patented work on concurrency, continuous data protection, backup, deduplication and storage reliability.
- **2009-2015** — Served as Vice President of Engineering at Kaminario and led work on the company’s K2 all-flash storage array.
- **2015-2016** — Served as Chief Technology Officer at Kaminario.
- **2017-present** — Joined VAST Data as co-founder and Chief R&D Officer, overseeing global engineering and the software at the center of its data platform.
- **2024** — Delivered the SYSTOR keynote ‘Breaking Barriers: Scalable Data Platform Architectures for the Next Era of AI.’
- **2026** — Presented VAST Data’s collaboration with CoreWeave at VAST Forward and marked the company’s Series F financing at a $30 billion valuation.

## Achievements

- Co-founded VAST Data and leads its global engineering organization as Chief R&D Officer.
- Helped develop the architecture that VAST expanded into a unified data and computing platform for AI workloads.
- Named as an inventor on numerous storage-system patents covering subjects including deduplication, backup relationships, write atomicity, erasure coding and power management.
- Co-authored ‘Concurrent and Distributed Desk Checking’ and contributed to ‘Architectures for Controller Based CDP.’
- Delivered a 2024 SYSTOR keynote on algorithms and data structures for exabyte-scale AI data platforms.
- Led engineering at Kaminario during development of its K2 all-flash array before serving as the company’s CTO.

## Latest updates

- **2026-06** — Shared a conversation with Microsoft about collaboration on AI pipelines and wrote that he was looking forward to what the teams could achieve together.
- **2026-05** — Explained VAST Data’s employee-liquidity philosophy, saying employees are partners in the company’s success and describing how secondary transactions can help them buy homes or pay mortgages.
- **2026-04** — Marked VAST Data’s Series F at a $30 billion valuation, credited the team, customers and partners, and said the next R&D chapter was underway.
- **2026-04** — Highlighted his VAST Forward presentation with CoreWeave engineering leader Chen Goldberg about the companies’ collaboration.
- **2024-07** — Mentored BonData CEO Caroline Meidan through Calcalist and Poalim Tech’s Growth+ program, focusing on product discovery, organizational buying groups and pricing.

## Links

- Website: https://www.vastdata.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shachar-fienblit-7ab933

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/shachar-fienblit
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-09-26