With more than three decades of experience at the intersection of technology and security, Vitaly Gudanets has helped shape how some of the world’s most influential companies protect their platforms, data, and users. As a Partner at Lightspeed, he focuses on backing early-stage founders building the next generation of security and infrastructure companies.

Prior to joining Lightspeed, Vitaly served as Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Netflix, where he led Security and Privacy Engineering across one of the most beloved global consumer platforms. Before that, he spent nearly 13 years at Google, ultimately rising to Vice President of Security Engineering. There, he was responsible for protecting the infrastructure and applications that power Google’s global ecosystem, building systems capable of withstanding threats at an unprecedented scale.

Earlier in his career, Vitaly held senior infrastructure and technology leadership roles at VERITAS, Symantec, SanDisk, and Rainmaker Systems. Across these roles, he earned a reputation for operational rigor, scalable architecture, and pragmatic leadership.

Vitaly brings decades of technical and organizational experience, paired with deep empathy for the challenges founders face when building secure, resilient systems in an ever-evolving threat landscape. He serves on several advisory boards across the industry and takes a low-ego, hands-on approach when it comes to helping teams scale with confidence.