Mitek has hired Stephen Ritter as its new chief technology officer (CTO). Ritter joins the company after serving as SVP of engineering and research for Emotient, which was acquired by Apple in January.

“I am excited to lead the Mitek Labs and engineering teams, and help create the future of mobile commerce,” Ritter said. As CTO, Ritter will leverage his 25 years of experience and—in the words of Mitek CEO and president James DeBello—his “passion for creating game-changing technology” to drive development of Mitek’s mobile capture and identity-verification technologies.

Previous to Emotient, Ritter (right) worked as CTO and VP engineering at Cypher Genomics, which was acquired by Human Longevity. Before that he was VP of engineering at Websense and senior director of engineering at McAgee. He is a graduate of University of California, San Diego, where he earned a B.S. in cognitive science.

The personnel news for Mitek comes at the same time that the company is taking its technology global. Earlier this month, Mitek announced that its Mobile Deposit solution was now available in the U.K., and that other countries would follow soon. March has also been a month of adoptions for Mitek, with a leading platform provider deploying Mitek’s Mobile Fill solution to improve its onboarding process, and a top-five U.S. bank choosing Mitek’s Mobile Deposit for business multi-check capture. Mitek’s Mobile Verify solution won the Innovation Showcase Award at the BAI Payments Connect event last week.

Founded in 1985 and headquartered in San Diego, California, Mitek demonstrated its mobile photo account opening for mobile web and its mobile photo driver’s license authentication technology at FinovateSpring 2015.