Avalara Leadership

SVP, Global Sales

Sean is responsible for leading go-to-market sales functions at Avalara, including new and existing sales, customer success, sales development, and solution engineering. An established leader, Sean has successfully scaled businesses ranging from startups to established technology companies. Before joining Avalara, Sean was Chief Customer Officer at InStride and held leadership roles with IBM, private equity-backed firms, and the U.S. Army.

Avalara Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Scott McFarlane co-founded Avalara in 2004. Avalara started as a provider of digital sales tax compliance solutions in the U.S. and has grown globally to become a market leader in compliance automation software. Avalara’s mission is to be part of every transaction in the world by automating the compliance journey for businesses of all sizes.  

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President

As Avalara President, Ross oversees the majority of Avalara’s business operations including Avalara AvaTax for sales and use tax calculations, Avalara Returns, Avalara Exemption Certificate Management, Avalara Tax Research, and more. With a track record of successfully leading teams and building businesses, Ross has in-depth knowledge of the software industry, and strong strategic and capital markets expertise. Prior to Avalara, Ross was a managing director in the technology investment banking division at Goldman Sachs and focused on advising enterprise software clients. Prior to Goldman Sachs, Ross served as an investment banking vice president at Credit Suisse and was one of the first employees of VIACK Corporation, a web collaboration software company, where he served in several operational and financial leadership roles.

EVP and Chief Technology Officer

Danny leads Avalara's global development and engineering teams, and guides product innovation, integration, and reliability in the complex world of transaction tax compliance. He was previously senior vice president of engineering and chief software development officer with MobileIron, a leading mobile security company, and before that he was a group VP with Oracle, responsible for building the Oracle Service Cloud. Danny also served as VP of engineering at RightNow Technologies before it was acquired by Oracle in 2012.

EVP and Chief Security Officer

Tim Gaylor oversees security operations at Avalara. With over 25 years of experience in the security industry and global security team management, Tim is building out Avalara's regulatory, policy, enterprise risk management, corporate security, and privacy programs. Prior to Avalara, Tim managed all security operations, protecting over 100 million patient records, at athenahealth. Tim also spent 13 years at Citrix Systems and focused on security strategy, operations, and architecture for cloud and virtualization technologies.  He also served eight years at Sandia National Labs designing highly secure networking systems for U.S. government command and control centers. Tim holds seven patents for cryptographic systems.

EVP, Chief Strategy and Product Officer

Jayme leads Avalara’s overall corporate and product strategy, including the product management teams, while also managing and growing Avalara’s products. He has an extensive background in helping global companies understand and manage their tax compliance, and more than two decades of experience in tax technology, consulting, product development, and business management. Before joining Avalara, Jayme was responsible for leading the development and expansion of the software division at Ryan, a global tax services firm. He also previously served as senior vice president of sales, marketing, and professional services at Taxware.

EVP, Customer and Compliance Operations

Liz oversees global customer and compliance operations at Avalara. With more than 20 years of leadership experience from a variety of technology sectors including software, media, and services, Liz is known for her strong track record of innovative problem solving, process optimization, and the ability to deliver automation for efficiency and scale. Her commitment to operational excellence and aptitude for partnering cross-functionally helped her drive value in prior roles with Vubiquity, a provider of content monetization technology, and Zilog, a computing microcontroller manufacturer.

EVP, AvaTax General Management

Greg is responsible for leading Avalara’s AvaTax business and international operations, including Europe and Brazil. He joined Avalara in 2013 with a background in building business development strategies for technology companies, including leading business development efforts for Amazon in Europe. In addition to his proven track record in accelerating growth while leading Avalara’s business development and partner management operations, Greg has deep expertise in helping business partners grow their operations through SaaS partnerships.

SVP, Engineering

Denis leads the engineering teams responsible for Avalara's returns platform, focusing on accuracy, reliability, scalability, and cost efficiency for customers. He was previously vice president of product development at Workday, managing their Data-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service products, and vice president of software development at Oracle, building Oracle’s Service Cloud and Beehive Enterprise Collaboration Server. Denis has also held technical leadership positions at Sun Microsystems and several startup companies (founding one of them) and has been granted nine patents.

SVP, Engineering

Marcus leads the development of the Avalara AvaTax calculation and multi-tax engines as well as exemption certificate, document management, and shared services platforms. He joined Avalara in May 2019 and has 25 years of engineering experience in organizational transformation and innovation from startups to multinationals. Marcus focuses on growth and efficiency with an open platform strategy delivering scalability, nimbleness, and reliability.

Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Scott McFarlane is a co-founder and the CEO of Avalara. For more than 30 years Scott has pursued a specific vision: to blend strategic innovation with a rigorous operational discipline to create companies with unique cultures that shake the status quo. Beginning with his college days at Claremont McKenna, Scott partnered with his roommate to launch Lifecycle, the most popular computerized exercise bike of all time, and since then has led and advanced several companies including Aircoa and MetaInfo (which was sold to Check Point Software Technologies).

SVP, Global Partners

Meg leads Avalara’s global partner organization, which focuses on growing the company’s channel business and delivering a best-in-class partner experience. She previously served as Vice President of Global Partner Business Development and Strategy as well as Vice President and General Manager for the company’s ecommerce and marketplace business unit. Prior industry experience includes leading client and partner management and business development, as well as cofounding the global ecommerce business unit at Pitney Bowes.

SVP, Engineering

Vsu leads the research and engineering teams responsible for managing Avalara’s proprietary tax and compliance content database. He also drives the company’s use of AI and machine learning. He previously held senior leadership positions at Optum and Thomson Reuters overseeing large-scale engineering programs.

SVP, Architecture and Chief Architect

Tim leads the Technology Roadmap and Architecture discipline for Avalara. He previously served as VP and Chief Architect at ABB Digital and held several engineering leadership positions at Oracle and TIBCO.

SVP, Engineering

Masa leads Avalara’s engineering teams responsible for e-invoicing, global integrations, and licensing. He has a wide range of prior senior leadership experiences at Oracle and Siebel, as well as at a number of startup companies. He is an accomplished global leader with a focus on delivering software at scale in all forms — cloud, on-premises, and appliances. Masa also serves on several boards of startups and nonprofit organizations.