Vercel Hires David Totten to Lead New Global Field Engineering Unit
Executive Summary
Vercel has appointed David Totten, formerly of Databricks, as its new VP of Global Field Engineering. This move coincides with an organizational restructuring that unifies all customer-facing technical teams—including Sales Engineering, Developer Success, and Customer Support—into a single organization. The stated goal is to create a seamless and consistent technical journey for customers, reflecting Vercel's philosophy of building its go-to-market "like a product."
Key Takeaways
* New Leadership: David Totten, with two decades of experience at Databricks and a Fortune 5 company, will lead the new unified organization.
* Unified Structure: The Global Field Engineering unit merges Sales Engineering, Developer Success, Professional Services, and Customer Support Engineering to eliminate handoff friction and maintain context throughout the customer lifecycle.
* "GTM as a Product" Philosophy: Vercel is applying its product development obsession to its customer interactions, aiming to create a world-class experience from initial evaluation to long-term scaling.
* AI-Driven Strategy: The team will leverage Vercel's own AI products to improve its own operational efficiency and will use this firsthand experience to provide proven practices to customers deploying AI solutions.
* Internal Proof Points: Vercel highlights its own use of AI, such as an AI support agent that handles over 75% of cases and AI tools that reduced sales lead touches from 8 to 4.
Strategic Importance
This organizational change signals Vercel's focus on capturing the enterprise market by treating technical enablement and customer experience as a key competitive differentiator, not just a support function. By unifying its technical teams, Vercel aims to increase sales velocity and customer retention through a more cohesive, AI-powered go-to-market strategy.