Press releases

Nick Rockwell and Laura Thompson Join Lead Engineering Teams

SAN FRANCISCO (March 12, 2020)-- Fastly, Inc. (NYSE: FSLY), provider of a global edge cloud platform, has appointed Nick Rockwell as Senior Vice President of Engineering and Laura Thomson as Vice President of Engineering. The pair bring more than 30 years of combined experience transforming and growing global engineering teams, and will focus on scaling Compute@Edge and investing in Fastly’s security portfolio to give developers the freedom to push complex logic closer to end users quickly, securely, and reliably.


“One of my goals as a leader is to deliver on a mission that makes it easier for other innovators to build,” said Joshua Bixby, Chief Executive Officer at Fastly. “Experienced, mindful, and diligent leaders are key to accomplishing this, so I’m honored to bring on two brilliant engineering leaders that will guide development of our serverless compute and security offerings, and who deeply care about empowering developers to build far more advanced applications at the edge.”


Nick Rockwell joins as Senior Vice President of Engineering with 20 years of experience in product development and information security at top media publishing companies. Previously, Rockwell served as Chief Technology Officer at The New York Times, where he led the company’s digital transformation through a massive re-architecture of its website and other product offerings – including the company’s onboarding to Fastly’s edge cloud platform.


“I know first-hand the impact Fastly’s technology has on the internet, having driven the transformation of The New York Times’ digital business, so I’m thrilled to help many more companies improve their end users’ experience,” said Rockwell. “In addition to working on critical projects that extend our edge computing and security work, like Compute@Edge, I feel strongly about fostering a structure that maximizes the impact of each Fastly engineer. I look forward to being part of a culture that values openness and integrity, and that rallies around the shared goal of building a trustworthy internet.”


Fastly also welcomes Laura Thomson as Vice President of Engineering, who brings 12 years of experience leading large-scale engineering teams at Mozilla. There, Thomson led a team of over 100 engineers responsible for development, data, operations, and security of services, systems, and tools to support Firefox. Thomson said, “It’s been incredibly inspiring to see how much Fastly really cares about developers, both outside and inside the company. I’m deeply connected to Fastly’s mission to support and lift developers up, and am excited to further that mission through the projects my teams and I will drive.”


This news comes on the heels of Fastly’s launch of Compute@Edge, a powerful language-agnostic, serverless compute environment with greater security, more robust logic, and new levels of performance. Rockwell and Thomson will help lead the teams working on Compute@Edge, while empowering Fastly’s engineering arm to optimize systems while preserving performance, security, and reliability.

About Fastly

Fastly helps people stay better connected with the things they love. Fastly’s edge cloud platform enables customers to create great digital experiences quickly, securely, and reliably by processing, serving, and securing our customers’ applications as close to their end-users as possible — at the edge of the internet. Fastly’s platform is designed to take advantage of the modern internet, to be programmable, and to support agile software development with unmatched visibility and minimal latency, empowering developers to innovate with both performance and security. Fastly’s customers include many of the world’s most prominent companies, including Pinterest, The New York Times, and GitHub.

This press release contains “forward-looking” statements that are based on Fastly’s beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to Fastly on the date of this press release. Forward-looking statements may involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause its actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These statements include, but are not limited to, those regarding the scaling and development of Fastly’s Compute@Edge environment and security offerings, the speed, reliability, security and performance of Fastly’s Compute@Edge environment, and the optimization of Fastly’s systems while preserving performance, security and reliability. Except as required by law, Fastly assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements publicly, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future. Important factors that could cause Fastly’s actual results to differ materially are detailed from time to time in the reports Fastly files with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including in its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019. Copies of reports filed with the SEC are posted on Fastly’s website and are available from Fastly without charge.

Ready to get started?

Get in touch or create an account.