MongoDB has appointed Massimo Merlo as Area Vice President for the UK and Ireland, following its planned €74 million investment in Ireland.
Merlo will oversee sales and partnerships in both markets as the database software group seeks to expand its business with organisations building new applications and modernising older systems. He joins from Elastic, where he led operations across the UK and Ireland, Iberia and Italy.
The appointment comes as MongoDB expands its presence in Ireland. Earlier this year, it said it plans to create about 200 jobs by 2027, increasing its workforce in the country by more than 50% to over 500 employees.
A new office in Cork forms part of the plan, alongside the company's international headquarters in Dublin. The additional roles are expected to span engineering, product development and customer-facing teams across both sites.
MongoDB has operated in Dublin since 2013. What began as a base focused on customer and technical support has since expanded to include teams working on the company's database technology and serving customers in international markets.
The latest investment is also intended to deepen its engineering and AI work in Ireland. Those efforts are being led in part by Vice President of Product and Technology Dónal Walsh, who was recently appointed.
Irish expansion
MongoDB's hiring plans come as Ireland continues to attract investment in AI businesses. Figures published by Enterprise Ireland, based on PitchBook data, showed that Irish AI companies raised €256 million across 75 venture capital deals in 2026 to date.
That followed a record €691.3 million invested in Irish AI companies in 2025, according to the same data. Enterprise Ireland said Ireland ranked second in Europe for AI venture capital deals per capita so far this year.
As it adds staff locally, MongoDB has also been building links with prospective recruits. During Dublin AI Week, the group co-hosted a Student Builder Day for students and recent graduates, where engineers offered practical support on application building and shared information on graduate roles.
The event formed part of the company's wider recruitment efforts with Irish universities, alongside planned hiring across its Dublin and Cork operations.
Commercial remit
Merlo brings more than 14 years of experience in senior cloud and software sales roles. Before joining MongoDB, he spent four and a half years leading Elastic's UK and Ireland business, covering search, observability, security and AI.
Earlier in his career, he held senior roles at Commvault, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Veeam Software. At Hewlett Packard, he built and led a sales organisation covering the UK, Benelux and Nordic markets.
At MongoDB, his remit is to bring together sales, customer success, technical and partner teams across the UK and Ireland. The company wants to broaden its reach among businesses developing new AI-related services as well as those modernising long-running applications.
Merlo's arrival is one of several recent changes in MongoDB's commercial leadership outside the US. In September, the company appointed Richard Scott as Senior Vice President and Head of Asia Pacific and Japan. In April, Ryan Mac Ban became Chief Revenue Officer with responsibility for global sales.
In a statement on his appointment, Merlo said: "The UK and Ireland are hugely important markets for MongoDB. We've invested in Ireland because we see long-term opportunity here, both in the businesses building new applications and in the engineering talent that can help them do it. AI is adding to that momentum, but companies still need reliable data to make those applications useful.
"What I want to do is bring our teams and partners closer to customers. That means understanding what they're trying to build, helping them modernise the applications they already rely on and supporting them as they put new ideas into practice. We've got strong teams across the region; my job is to make sure customers feel the benefit of that."