iCIMS, a leading SaaS-based ATS/ CRM provider, has announced the appointment of Steve Lucas as its new chief executive officer.

Lucas has served on the board of iCIMS for the past year. Prior to this, he served as CEO of Marketo, tripling its revenue over his tenure before ultimately selling to Adobe for $4.75 billion dollars. Vista Equity Partners was the primary investor in Marketo, and is the primary investor in iCIMS.

iCIMS founder Colin Day stepped away from the role of CEO in September to devote more time to strategy and vision for the company. In a press release announcing the hire, he said:

“I could not be more delighted to welcome Steve to iCIMS as our new CEO. Steve’s enterprise software experience, impressive track record, and passion for customer success will accelerate and elevate the great team here at iCIMS as well as the industry at large.”

The move comes at a key point for iCIMS, as it faces continued competition from emergent ATS and CRM vendors, the seemingly inexorably advancement of Workday, and challenges arising from several recent significant acquisitions as the company continues its overall platform expansion. After what looked like a shrewd acquisition of TextRecruit in 2018, the industry scratched it's collective head when the company turned around and acquired perennial also-ran recruitment marketing platform Jibe in 2019. Particularly when SmashFly sold for (reportedly) fire-sale pricing to Symphony later the same year. In addition, Lucas will need to shake up a very local-focused culture. iCIMS has made it a practice of having as much of its talent working onsite as possible. Great for culture, to an extent, but much more challenging at a firm who's only real option for growth is continued globalization, and a handicap when it comes to landing key talent that may (for whatever strange reason) not want to relocate to Holmdel, New Jersey. And, considering Lucas's pedigree of packaging up a very similar offering for sale to a larger platform - also factoring in the Vista Equity angle - we have to assume iCIMS is being packaged up for an exit event in the near horizon.