Career profile
John Qian
Chief Information Security Officer, Aviatrix
- Current role, per sources checked 22 October 2026
- 10 September 2024
John Qian is the Chief Information Security Officer of Aviatrix, appointed in September 2024. In the role he leads and oversees the company's security strategy, managing its current posture and future roadmap.
Career path
Qian was a Principal Engineer at Cisco Systems, where he initiated the company's product security program by defining and implementing Cisco's secure development lifecycle.
He then became Head of Security Architecture at Zoom, where he oversaw the security posture of Zoom products and features, as well as cloud environments and sensitive IT applications. Over four years, his team built one of the industry's most mature security programs, supporting Zoom's rapid growth during the pandemic.
Aviatrix named Qian Chief Information Security Officer in September 2024, with the company announcing the appointment on September 10 of that year. The appointment followed a period of leadership expansion at Aviatrix under CEO Doug Merritt, which also included new chief technology, customer, marketing and human resources officers.
On joining, Qian said the convergence of networking and security operations would let organizations retain control of critical applications while reducing complexity, adding: "I'm excited to support Aviatrix's commitment to address these security challenges by leveraging advanced technologies, including AI."
Remit and published work
Aviatrix describes Qian's focus as securing a cloud networking platform used by more than 500 enterprises, combining visibility, security and control for multicloud environments.
As CISO, Qian has published articles on the company's site, including MCP Network Layer Security: What the New MCP Specification Misses, Introducing the Aviatrix Cloud Threat Command Center: Built for the Containment Era, and Case Study: Securing AI Agents Across Clouds.
