Red Hat Leader Matt Hicks Chronicles His Journey from Engineer to CEO
Matt Hicks, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Red Hat, has had an illustrious career in the tech industry. Born in America, he developed a fascination with technology at a young age, particularly with Linux operating systems.
Hicks studied computer hardware engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, but his true interest lay in software. He began consulting for companies during his time in school and continued after graduation, learning to navigate the challenges of delivering technology to customers.
He joined IBM as an IT consultant, where he gained a unique perspective on open-source software and its applications in enterprise environments. Hicks' experience in startups also broadened his understanding of engineering, IT, and consulting.
Hicks eventually joined Red Hat in 2006 as a developer on the internal IT team, where he was tasked with porting Perl applications to Java. He spent several years learning about the company's inner workings and eventually became one of the founding engineers on the OpenShift team.