Tesco has poached Airbus executive Guus Dekkers as its new chief technology officer to drive innovation across its retail operations.

Dekkers will join the grocer on April 16 as a direct replacement for Edmond Mesrobian, who is retiring and returning to his home city of Seattle in the US.

Tesco said Dekkers will be charged with building on Mesrobian’s work to strengthen its tech capabilities, and create “innovative retail solutions” for its customers.

He will report directly into group chief executive Dave Lewis.

Dekkers joins Britain’s biggest grocer from Airbus, where he spent almost 10 years, latterly as chief information officer and senior vice-president.

He previously held senior roles at Volkswagen, Siemens, Continental and Johnson Controls Automotive Group.

Dekkers said: “I am excited to be joining Tesco. I hope that my experience in large-scale IT transformations, advanced information technologies, business process optimisations and digital innovations will allow me to support Tesco in translating rapidly evolving technological and digital capabilities into innovative solutions, helping us to serve our customers a little better every day.”

Lewis said Dekkers would bring “extremely strong expertise in driving large-scale IT transformations” to the business.

He added: “I’m looking forward to working with him, and want to thank Edmond for all that he has done to build our technology capability and enhance our security and resilience since 2015.”