Tesco poaches Guus Dekkers from Airbus to be its new chief technology officer

Outoing CTO Edmond Mesrobian to return to Seattle

Tesco has appointed Airbus chief technology officer Guss Dekkers as its new CTO to replace Edmond Mesrobian, who is returning to his native Seattle after almost three years at the retailer.

Dekkers' remit will be to build on Mesrobian's work, strengthening Tesco's technological capabilities and developing "innovative retail solutions", according to the company.

In addition to Airbus, Dekkers' career has also taken in IT roles at Volkswagen, Johnson Controls Automotive Group, Siemens and tire-maker Continental AG. In particular, Dekkers was keen to stress his own experience in major IT transformation projects.

He said: "I hope that my experience in large scale IT transformations, advanced information technologies, business process optimisations and digital innovations will allow me to support Tesco in translating rapidly evolving technological and digital capabilities into innovative solutions, helping us to serve our customers a little better every day."

Tesco Group CEO Dave Lewis also referenced Dekkers' "extremely strong expertise in driving large-scale IT transformations, which will help us build on the progress we've been making to transform our business over the last three years".

Outgoing CTO Mesrobian, who came to Tesco following a stint as CTO at travel firm Expedia, took over at Tesco in June 2015. He said that he had been involved in a "step change" in Tesco's "organisational capability", which involved the re-imagination of careers in technology, the adoption of agile product development and the delivery of API and data platforms "powering our retail service model".

At Airbus, Dekkers described his role as having the "right strategy" to and infrastructure in place to ensure that the company runs efficiently, making the most of the company's estimated €500 million annual spending on IT.

Dekkers will join Tesco on 16 April, reporting directly to Lewis.