US data storage business Seagate Technology has appointed Jim Lee as chief legal officer, filling the seat vacated by Kate Schuelke earlier this year.

Lee joins from space technology and geospatial intelligence business Maxar Technologies, where he was general counsel, helping to build out its legal and compliance function, establish a successful litigation track-record and support multiple complex transactions. At Seagate, Lee will oversee all legal matters and also serve as corporate secretary.

Seagate provides mass-data storage systems and services. It is headquartered in Dublin but has its operational base in Fremont, California.

Dave Mosley, Seagate’s CEO, said: “As an accomplished public company general counsel, Jim brings a wealth of experience and broad legal knowledge that make him well suited for this role with Seagate. I look forward to his contributions as we continue to innovate breakthrough storage technology to capture the tremendous data growth opportunities ahead.”

Lee spent five and a half years at Maxar, having previously spent 15 years at food, facilities and uniform services business Aramark as deputy GC. Prior to that he spent three years as counsel at O’Melveny & Myers – his second spell at the firm. He started his legal career at O’Melveny in 1995 before moving to supply chain software start-up eConnections in 2000 as GC.

Schuelke, meantime, exited Seagate to join Credo Technology Group in January as CLO. She had spent more than six and a half years at Seagate, having arrived in 2017 after two decades at chipmaker Altera Corporation where she was GC. Prior to her in-house career, she spent seven years as an associate at Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco and New York.

On her arrival in January, Credo CEO and president Bill Brennan said: “Kate’s the right leader to help accelerate Credo’s growth as we continue to scale as an innovator and disruptor with our new breed of connectivity solutions. Her business and legal experience, including more than 20 years in the semiconductor industry, will play a critical role in navigating the growth opportunities and challenges which lie ahead as we address the demands for AI, high performance compute and the continuing expansion of hyper scale data centres.”

In other US tech moves, last month optical networking business Infinera hired former SunPower Corporation CLO Regan MacPherson as its new legal head. Also in May, networking and cloud services provider Lumen Technologies hired former Hulu GC Chad Ho as its next CLO.