Raffi Krikorian leaves Uber

Raffi Krikorian, Senior Engineering Lead at Uber’s Advanced Technologies Center (ATC) stepped down from his position.

Recode reported about this, referring to its sources.

Raffi Krikorian joined Uber in March, 2015. Previously he held the position of Vice-President at Twitter.

In an email to employees on Monday, Krikorian said he wanted to take time to focus on his family, as they moved to California. Krikorian said that he might return, though not in his original role.

“When I am ready to jump back in, I will figure out where I may be able to best help the ATG at that time,” he wrote.

Itel.am talked to Raffi Krikorian during his visit to Yerevan in 2016. The interview is available here.

Recode writes that Krikorian is just one in a series of top engineers, who had left the ATC since Uber acquired Otto in August 2016. As part of the acquisition, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick put Otto co-founder and one of the first employees of Google’s self-driving car project Anthony Levandowski at the head of all of its autonomous technology efforts.

An information was received today that Alphabet’s Waymo (formerly Google’s self-driving car unit) is suing Otto and Uber. Waymo former employee and Otto Co-founder Anthony Levandowski is accused of downloading 14 000 “highly confidential” files to an external hard drive on his leave from the company.