The former associate general counsel of Airbnb has joined Swiss open-source software development firm SonarSource to become its first-ever chief legal officer.
Derek Smith takes control of Sonar’s legal department after the Geneva-based company announced earlier this year that it had raised $412 million from investors in a Valuation of $4.7 billion.
Sonar was launched in 2008 and offers tools to help developers write code and fix program errors in software. The company, which has an office in Austin, Texas, boasts that more than 300,000 organizations use its solutions, including Google parent Alphabet, IBM, Microsoft and NASA.
Smith, who announced his new position at GC in a LinkedIn post, said in an email Monday that he would be working remotely from Park City, Utah. He was last year the top Amsterdam-based advocate for MessageBird, a cloud communications platform with a $3.8 billion valuation.
During his short stint as chief legal officer, he led the company’s 20-person legal department, completed the integration of four acquisitions, hired eight team members, and “executed hundreds of commercial contracts. supporting revenue growth,” according to his LinkedIn profile.
Prior to MessageBird, Smith worked for nearly five years at Airbnb in San Francisco. He came to the short-term rental company as senior counsel and worked his way up to associate GC headquarters, leading a 15-member team that advised Airbnb’s homes business.
Her team helped develop Airbnb’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which included changes to the house cleaning system and cancellation policy. The team was also involved in the company’s blockbuster IPO in 2020, which raised $3.5 billion at a valuation of over $100 billion.
Earlier in his career, Smith was a data security and privacy advisor for software company Palantir Technologies, a GC assistant at online marketplace LivingSocial, and a partner at Latham and Watkins.
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