A former executive in charge of products at Microsoft, Panos Panay, will head the Amazon division in charge of the Alexa and Echo products.
Amazon announced on Wednesday that Panay, who oversaw the development of the Surface line of laptops while working for Microsoft for more than 19 years, will begin in the new position in October.
He will succeed Amazon veteran Dave Limp, who announced his resignation later this year and left the business last year along with other executives in the sector.
The device division, despite being relatively small inside Amazon’s vast empire, has been symbolically significant as a testing ground for new technology and as Alexa’s public face through voice-assistant gadgets.
Panay has experience in both hardware and integrated services, and more recently, he led the release of the Windows 11 operating system.
