Phil Hester

As senior vice president of R&D at National Instruments, Phil Hester provides strategic guidance to approximately 1,900 global hardware and software development team members to help continue the company’s track record of delivering innovative products and services. He is also responsible for the Quality organization which ensures worldwide quality and customer satisfaction for NI products.

Throughout his 30-year career, Hester has distinguished himself as a technology leader holding several key engineering and management positions. Before joining NI in 2009, he served as the senior vice president and chief technology officer at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Prior to AMD, Hester spent more than two decades working in a variety of leadership and management roles at IBM, including chief technology officer and vice president of systems and technology for the PC division and general manager of the systems and technology division, where he oversaw 3,000 employees globally. Hester is also an entrepreneur, having been the co-founder and CEO of a company that develops and manufactures easy-to-deploy enterprise quality server and storage products for global OEMs.

He holds more than 10 patents relating to microprocessor architecture, memory controllers, and microprocessor testability. He serves as a director for ON Semiconductor and chairs the Science and Technology Committee. He has also served on the University of Texas Engineering Foundation Advisory Council.

Hester received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering with highest honors and master’s degree in engineering, both from The University of Texas at Austin, where he was recognized as the College of Engineering’s Outstanding Young Alumnus in 1991.