Yahoo nabs former Netflix exec as CIO

Search engine Yahoo has hired Netflix's former head of operations, Mike Kail, as its new chief information officer and head of infrastructure.

Mike Kail, CIO of Yahoo.

Kail will lead Yahoo's IT and data centre operations and will report directly to CEO Marissa Mayer.

Kail previously spent three years as the vice president of IT operations at video streaming service Netflix, a role he left two weeks ago.

He signalled a move to a "bigger role at a bigger tech company" in Silicon Valley in a blog post at the time.

"Netflix has been a place of intense enjoyment and I often had to pinch myself to make sure that I was really the VP of IT at one of the most disruptive and innovative companies in the world," Kail said in July.

Kail joins Yahoo following an "exhaustive" search for the company's next CIO. Its former head of IT, David Dibble, left his position in July last year.

Mayer said in a statement that Kail's 23 years of IT operations experience would provide Yahoo “the perfect combination of experience and vision to lead our IT and infrastructure to even greater reach and scale.”

"Technical infrastructure has always played an important role in Yahoo’s ability to deliver the best possible user experiences," she said.