Former Apple Software Chief Joins Palm Backer Elevation Partners

Add another name to the list of former Apple employees resurfacing at Palm and its chief backer, Elevation Partners. Avie Tevanian, who once served as Apple’s chief software technology officer, has joined Elevation as a managing director. 

“Avie and I worked closely together at Apple for many years and I have always admired his engineering talent and leadership, his strategic vision for how software can transform businesses and his ability to execute on that vision,” Elevation co-founder Fred Anderson said in a statement. “We are proud that he has decided to join Elevation and believe he will be a huge asset as we explore new investment opportunities.”

Indeed. Tevanian, who spent nearly a decade leading Apple’s software engineering efforts before leaving in 2006, came to the company from Steve Jobs’s Next Computer, where he helped build the NeXTSTEP operating system, an early precursor of the current Mac OS.

I can’t imagine that Apple (AAPL) is at all happy about Tevanian’s latest career choice.

By enlisting with Elevation, Tevanian joins a group of Palm-backing Apple alums that includes Palm (PALM) Chairman and CEO Jon Rubinstein, formerly Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering; Senior VP of Product Development Mike Bell, former SVP of product development at Apple; Senior Apple Designer Jeff Zwerner; VP of Public Relations Lynn Fox, who once headed up Mac PR for the Cupertino, Calif., company; and, of course, board member Fred Anderson, who served as Apple’s CFO from 1996 to 2004.

Image credit: Que Nerd