Rich Wasserman has been named the new SVP of Product Engineering at Scientific Games.
A veteran of Amazon and Facebook, Wasserman has over two decades of product and tech experience and was most recently employed as VP of Engineering and ML/Science at Stitch Fix, an online personal styling service.
Wasserman’s lack of gambling industry experience has not deterred the supplier from making the appointment.
He will now take charge of product engineering across the company’s full range of lottery systems products – these serve more than 150 lotteries across the globe.
His new list of responsibilities will include advancing hardware and software platforms, accelerating innovation, expanding analytics capabilities and delivering value to lottery customers worldwide.
Pat McHugh is the CEO at Scientific Games and has described his own enthusiasm for the hire, saying: “We're excited to add Rich's deep technical expertise scaling innovative, AI-driven platforms at world-class organizations to further strengthen Scientific Games' technology leadership.”
Prior to his senior roles with Amazon and Facebook, Wasserman completed a degree in Computer Science at the University of Buffalo and picked up a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering at the same place.
McHugh added: “As we continue investing in innovation and analytics across retail and digital lottery solutions, his experience and leadership will help us deliver the next generation of high-performance products that drive sustainable growth for our lottery customers worldwide.”
This appointment follows hot on the heels of the hiring of Ovie Doro as SVP of Data, Analytics and AI earlier in February.
In January, it was announced that Scientific Games and Brightstar Entertainment are to operate a new lottery in Brazil