Control and visibility for every AI workload and agent, wherever they run.
Tigera delivers unified control and visibility for AI workloads and agents, and is the creator and maintainer of Calico Open Source, the most widely used container networking and security solution. Our solutions are used by leading companies, including NVIDIA, Royal Bank of Canada, Bloomberg, Chipotle, GoDaddy, and Upwork.
Enforce policy and provide visibility across AI workloads and agents, wherever they run
These values lie at the heart of everything we do, and have enabled us to create best-in-class products tailored to user needs, that grow and evolve alongside changing technologies.
Tigera’s story began in 2016 with Project Calico, an open-source container networking and security project with an active development and user community. Calico Open Source was born out of this project and has grown to be the most widely adopted solution for networking and security for containers and Kubernetes, powering 1M+ clusters daily.
As adoption of containers and Kubernetes grew and organizations started using Kubernetes at scale, they began to encounter more advanced requirements for security and observability. Tigera responded to this need by building upon Calico Open Source to provide secure networking for containers and Kubernetes. Now, as AI agents are transforming enterprise infrastructure, Tigera is extending the same policy framework and enforcement rigor to govern AI agents. Lynx is the natural progression of a decade of policy expertise.
Tigera was founded by the original Project Calico engineering team. We are committed to maintaining Calico Open Source as the leading standard for container and Kubernetes networking and security, while offering advanced capabilities through the Calico platform and Lynx.
CEO
Ratan is responsible for defining strategy, execution and scaling revenues at Tigera. He is an entrepreneurial executive with extensive experience incubating, building and scaling software businesses from early stage to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. He is also a proven leader with a track record of building world-class teams.
Ratan founded and built two SaaS companies, IPTouch and PersonalMD.com. He has also held senior level positions at Actifio, Cisco, Sun Microsystems and SupportSoft. He has an MBA from Santa Clara University, an MS in Computer Science from Louisiana State University and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Osmania University.
President
As President of Tigera, Pervez has overall responsibility for Tigera’s core Unified Platform business, driving revenue growth and go-to-market execution across Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Product Management and Partner Development. He also continues to lead Tigera’s Customer Success and Solutions Engineering organizations, ensuring that customers achieve measurable outcomes with Calico solutions.
Pervez brings over 30 years of experience spanning operations, customer success, professional services, and engineering. His career reflects a rare blend of entrepreneurship, technology leadership, and operational scale — from founding and growing businesses to leading global teams at high-growth software companies.
Before Tigera, Pervez was Senior Vice President of Global Services and Customer Success at Actifio, where he led post-sales delivery at scale. Prior to that, he served as Chief Information Officer at Impremedia, overseeing the successful migration of more than 90% of the company’s technology infrastructure to the cloud. Earlier in his career, Pervez co-founded Ad2Pro Media Solutions, one of the world’s largest providers of offshore marketing and advertising design services to global media and retail companies, where he served as Chief Operating Officer.
Pervez holds a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Southern California and a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Osmania University.
Chief Technology Officer
Peter Kelly is Chief Technology Officer at Tigera and Site Leader for Tigera’s EMEA office in Cork, Ireland. He is responsible for Tigera’s technology strategy including new and emerging technologies. Peter has two decades of experience in software development, including recently building control plane technology for open-source proxies at NGINX and later F5 Networks, where he held engineering leadership positions. Peter has built software products in a wide variety of industries including gaming, automotive diagnostics, B2B SaaS project management software, mobile banking, and more.
Peter has a degree in Computer Science and a Master’s in Advanced Software Engineering.
VP of Engineering
As Vice President of Engineering at Tigera, Arvind leads the global engineering and technical operations, driving the strategy for unified network security and observability in cloud-scale and AI-driven environments.
Arvind is a seasoned engineering leader with nearly 25 years of experience scaling innovative solutions across Networking, Network Security, and Data Center Infrastructure. Previously, he was instrumental at A10 Networks, where he spearheaded the development of control and observability products for advanced network functions, driving significant revenue growth through key product expansion. His foundational work at Cisco included building several cutting-edge networking and data center products, including industry-pioneering software for unified management of data center infrastructure.
He is deeply committed to translating customer needs into resilient, scalable architecture. Arvind has successfully built and matured high-performing, global engineering teams across multiple organizations, consistently fostering a culture of technical excellence and a customer-centric mindset. He holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from The Ohio State University and a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering from Bangalore University.
Head of Sales
Chris Calandro is Head of Sales at Tigera, where he is responsible for driving revenue growth. Chris brings over 20 years of experience in Sales and Account Management, spanning several early-stage startups and multi-billion-dollar enterprises. Throughout his career, Chris has successfully built new territories from the ground up and managed large-scale global accounts. Over the past decade, he has focused on helping organizations adopt cloud-native software technologies, including containers, cloud infrastructure, and network security solutions. Chris holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from Southern Methodist University.
VP of Product
As VP of Product at Tigera, Alain leads overall product management strategy and execution. He brings 23+ years of product management leadership experience at high-growth cybersecurity and infrastructure startups. Before Tigera, Alain led product management at Bolster AI, scaling the company’s brand and phishing protection platform from a handful of early adopters to enterprise customers including Uber, Dropbox, and SoFi. Prior to Bolster, Alain was Vice President of Product at Vectra AI, where he was instrumental in building the foundation of a machine-learning-based platform for breach detection. Alain holds a PhD in Computer Science from Columbia University and began his career at Bell Labs in New Jersey.
Ratan is responsible for defining strategy, execution and scaling revenues at Tigera. He is an entrepreneurial executive with extensive experience incubating, building and scaling software businesses from early stage to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. He is also a proven leader with a track record of building world-class teams.
Ratan founded and built two SaaS companies, IPTouch and PersonalMD.com. He has also held senior level positions at Actifio, Cisco, Sun Microsystems and SupportSoft. He has an MBA from Santa Clara University, an MS in Computer Science from Louisiana State University and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Osmania University.
Soma joined Madrona in November 2015 and is a Managing Director at Madrona. Prior to Madrona, Soma had a successful twenty-seven year career at Microsoft Corporation including being the Senior Vice President of the Developer Division. Soma has long been an angel investor with investments across a wide range of technology areas both in the U.S. and internationally. At Madrona, he is focusing on Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Applications, developer centric next-generation cloud platforms and tools, and the emergence of new technologies such as VR/AR. He has authored several pieces outlining Madrona’s thinking about how these technologies will evolve.
Forest Baskett has been with NEA since 1999 and is currently a Special Partner focused on technology investing. He holds board positions at several private companies. Some of his investments that became public companies are Atheros Communications, Audience, Data Domain, Fusion–io and Tableau Software. Prior to NEA, Forest was Senior Vice President of R&D and Chief Technology Officer of Silicon Graphics Inc. Before joining SGI, he founded and directed the Western Research Laboratory of Digital Equipment Corporation. He began his career as a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford University. Dr. Baskett received a BA in Mathematics from Rice University, a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Aaron Jacobson joined NEA in 2011 and is a Partner focused on investing in entrepreneurs seeking to build, scale and secure the next-generation of SaaS applications, big data platforms, and cloud infrastructure. He serves on the board of Tigera and illusive networks, and is an observer at NGINX, Streamsets, Move Guides, Mimosa Networks, Juvo, and Built Robotics. He has also worked closely with many other NEA portfolio companies including Box (NYSE:Box), Databricks, MapR, UnifyID, Bloom Energy, and Coursera. In 2016 he was named to Forbes Magazine’s “30 under 30” in Venture Capital and the Silicon Valley Business Journal’s “40 Under 40”.
