A veteran of Google's search team is headed to Uber.
Amit Singhal tweeted on Friday that he was "catching the next ride of [his] professional journey" at Uber. Singhal retired as the executive in charge of search at Google in February after 15 years at the company. His new role will be senior vice president of engineering, Uber said in a statement.
"As I dug deeper into how Uber works, it became pretty clear that this is one of the hardest — and therefore most fun — computer science and engineering challenges in the world today," Singhal wrote on his blog.
Singhal created patented technology for Google's hallmark search engine, including ways to display more than one "first" search result, and ways to better detect filler words like "a" and "the" in a search query. Singhal was also a crucial to creating some of Google's newer search features, like the ability to search for flights and speech recognition.
In addition to search, Google is also a pioneer in the online mapping industry. Singhal's move to Uber comes at a time when voice-activated searches and assistants are increasingly making their way into the car. The ability to hail an Uber has come to Amazon's Echo and Apple's Siri over the past year.
"I love Amit's excitement for solving complex computer science problems and his passion for helping improve people's lives through technology," Uber CEO Travis Kalanick posted on Facebook. "The team at Uber, myself included, will learn a lot from him, and I can't wait for him to get started."