Yahoo7 hires new director of technology

Yahoo7 has appointed former managing director of software development firm SoftwareSeni Paul Russell as its new director of technology.

Paul Russell

Russell has served as the managing director at SoftwareSeni since April 2014.

He has previous experience in the online media sector, having worked as the CIO at Fairfax Digital as well as the head of technology for digital media at Network Ten.

In a statement, Yahoo7 CEO Ed Harrison praised Russell’s experience in “leading and growing technology and digital businesses”.

“In his role, Paul will work closely with the Yahoo7 product teams and our joint venture partners, Seven West Media and Yahoo,” Harrison said.

A spokesperson said Russell would focus on Yahoo7's ‘Mavens’ strategy -- a financial metric tracking revenue in the company’s four key areas of growth: mobile, video, native and social.

Russell replaces Craig Penfold, who served as Yahoo7’s CTO for just over two years before moving to jobs site Seek in April as its delivery and operations director.

One of the key projects undertaken under Penfold’s watch was the rollout of a semantic publishing platform, backed by an open source graph database, for websites promoting the Seven Network’s free-to-air programs.

The new position is based in Sydney.Russell will start his new role in mid-August.