Mentor Team: Dave McCandless
- Senior Director of IT at Guardant Health
- Dave McCandless on LinkedIn
Dave McCandless, WSU B.S. Computer Science ’81, is a technology executive with more than 40 years of experience in the IT industry, including advisory and leadership roles across higher education, nonprofit, and community initiatives. He has been actively engaged in multiple Washington State University programs, including board leadership for the Harold Frank Engineering Entrepreneurship Institute, and currently supports the Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture through advisory and mentoring activities.
Dave serves as Senior Director of IT at Guardant Health, a leading life sciences company specializing in blood-based diagnostics for early cancer detection in high-risk populations and recurrence monitoring for cancer survivors. He oversees all aspects of IT service delivery, with a focus on early adoption of emerging technologies, innovation processes, and scalable infrastructure that support Guardant Health’s leadership in precision oncology.
Prior to joining Guardant Health, Dave held senior leadership roles in software development, infrastructure, and IT operations with Oracle, Bank of America, Chevron, AT&T Bell Labs, and Navis. He also led infrastructure architecture and operations for the HedgeStreet (now Nadex) binary options exchange. Dave earned an M.S. in Computer Sciences from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
He has served as an adjunct professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley and has been a guest lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University. His publications include contributions to the CIO Body of Knowledge, with a focus on Business Continuity Planning.
Dave currently serves as an advisory board member for Heligenics, YagnaIQ, and JobzCafe, and previously served on the advisory board for the Fisher CIO Leadership Program at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. He is a co-founder of the East Bay ICT Partnership and currently serves as Board Chair of the Pinkney Foundation, a nonprofit organization developing youth golf and life-skills programs in the Oakland, California community.