Ray Schmidt, the chief information officer of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has resigned from his position to work in the private sector, the PCAOB announced Wednesday.

Schmidt worked at the PCAOB since its inception nearly five years ago and has been responsible for developing the board’s technology strategy. One of his most notable achievements was the creation of an online system for audit firms to register before their deadlines.

“Ray’s focus on building a robust and secure technological infrastructure has been very beneficial to the PCAOB,” Mark Olson, the PCAOB’s chairman, said in a statement.

However, news of Schmidt’s departure also comes one week after the board’s Internal Oversight and Performance Assurance unit found that a new $1.3 million data management system has been failing. The automated tool, intended for documenting large-firm inspections, was criticized for being “slow” and “cumbersome”, and has become such a liability that inspectors have opted to work around it.

Schmidt joined the audit regulator from RS Information Systems, a federal technology and engineering contractor, where he was corporate enterprise manager. Earlier, Schmidt held technical and management positions at MicroStrategy, E-Systems and Control Data Corp.

“Rapidly building an effective technology organization from scratch is a unique, challenging and rewarding achievement,” Schmidt said of his time at the PCAOB.

The board has appointed Marc Stewart, deputy director of the PCAOB’s office of information technology, to serve as interim CIO beginning September 1 until a permanent replacement is chosen.