In 1984, 33-year-old Joseph B. Costello joined SDA as vice-president of customer service. He held a number of positions, and in March of 1987 became SDA’s president and chief operating officer. In 1988, ECAD Inc. and SDA Systems Inc. merged to become Cadence Design Systems. Costello was CEO of Cadence Design Systems from 1987 – 1997.
Costello had received an M.A. in physics from Yale University in 1975 and had begun Ph.D. studies at the University of California at Berkeley before becoming a research and development manager at National Semiconductor. (He earned his M.A. from Berkeley in 1979.)
According to his LinkedIn page, Costello is now executive chairman of Metrics Technologies (Aug 2019 – Present) and Arrikto (Mar 2019 – present). He is the chairman of the board of directors at kwikbit (Jan 2011 – present). He was the CEO of Enlighted inc, from Apr 2014 – Jul 2018, CEO of Orb Networks from Oct 2006 – Oct 2013, CEO of think3 from 1999 – 2006, Chairman of Altius from 1998 – 2005, and CEO of Cadence Design Systems from 1987 – 1997.
