Walmart has appointed Suresh Kumar, an IIT Madras graduate and former Google executive, as its new chief technology officer and chief development officer.

California-based Kumar has a Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and a Ph.D. in engineering from Princeton University. Walmart is undertaking some major investments in its e-commerce business and the appointment of Kumar will help in competing more effectively with rivals such as Amazon.

Walmart announced in a blog post and in a memo sent by CEO Doug McMillon to employees that Kumar is joining the company July 8 and will report directly to him.

Kumar was most recently at Google, serving as Vice President and General Manager of Display, Video, App Ads and Analytics. Prior to Google, he was the Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s Cloud Infrastructure and Operations.

He spent 15 years at Amazon in various leadership roles, including Vice President of Technology for Retail Systems and Operations, and he led Amazon’s retail supply chain and inventory management systems. Before Amazon.com, Kumar was a research staff member at IBM T J Watson Research Center.

Kumar and his wife Gayathri currently live in Cupertino, CA and have two daughters. He will be based in Walmart’s Sunnyvale office, officially starting on July 8.

“Walmart is one of the great success stories in how a company evolves over time to serve the changing needs of its customers, and today, it is in the midst of a very exciting digital transformation,” Kumar said in a statement. “With more than 11,000 stores ... the potential for technology to help people at scale is unparalleled, and I am excited to be part of this.”