James Davies

James Richards has extensive experience in engineering leadership, currently serving as CTO at Udacity since May 2016, with prior roles as VP Engineering and Director of Engineering. Before joining Udacity, James held a managerial position at Nest Labs and progressed through multiple roles at LinkedIn, including Sr. Engineering Manager, where responsibilities included overseeing teams for Groups, Company Profiles, News Recommendations, and Member Profiles. James began their career at IBM and has also worked as a Software Engineer at E Patterns and DemandTec, developing systems and leveraging technologies such as J2EE. James holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from UC Santa Barbara.