Swan worked at General Electric starting in 1985 after receiving his MBA, holding various senior finance roles during his 15-year tenure. He was at Electronic Data Systems as CFO. From 1988 until 1994 he was involved with GE's corporate audit staff, and afterwards he became the CFO of GE Transportation Systems. From 1997 until 1998, he was the vice president of Finance for GE Medical Systems in Europe. From 1998 until 1999, he was vice president of finance and CFO of GE Lighting. He joined Webvan in 1999 as a vice president of finance. From 2000 until 2001 he was the company's COO and CFO. In 2001 he became CEO after the resignation of George Shaheen four months before the company went under. After Webvan, he joined TRW as CFO, serving as vice president of TRW Automotive Holdings. He was with TRW from July 2001 until December 2002. In 2001, he became CFO of Northrop Grumman Space & Mission Systems Corporation. He was also CFO of Electronic Data Systems Corporation. From 2003 until 2006, he was CFO of HP Enterprise Services.
eBay and General Atlantic
Swan was appointed eBay CFO in February 2006. He was CFO at eBay from March 2006 until July 2015. In 2015 he "oversaw" the spinoff of PayPal Holdings. In 2013, the Silicon Valley Business Journal named him CFO of the Year. In 2014, he won a Lifetime Achievement Awardat the Bay Area CFO of the Year Awards. That year, Institutional Investor named him to its America's Best CFOs list. In 2015, he became an operating partner at the growth equity firm General Atlantic LLC. He was an operating partner at General Atlantic from September 2015 until September 2016.
Intel
In September 2016, Swan was named the new CFO of Intel, replacing Stacy Smith, and joining from General Atlantic. He officially joined Intel on October 10, 2016 as executive vice president and first outside CFO that Intel had recruited since 1983. He was named interim CEO on June 21, 2018 following the resignation of Brian Krzanich. Swan had oversight at that point for sales, manufacturing, and operations. In September 2018, he addressed supply concerns with an open letter. Bob Swan remained Intel's interim CEO and CFO until January 31, 2019 when he was appointed permanent CEO. He had reportedly told employees he was not pursuing a permanent CEO position. In December 2018, it was reported that he was the only Intel insider buying stock since 2010. He was also the only eBay insider to buy stock in years.
Organizations
In April 2001, Swan became a director at Webvan group, and he was a director at PayPal Holdings until July 17, 2015. In June 2011, he was a director at Radial. He joined eBay's board in 2015 and in 2016 he was on the boards of eBay, Applied Materials, App Dynamics, and Alignment Healthcare. He was on the board of AppDynamics until October 2016 and Applied Materials until September 2016. He remains on the board of Alignment Healthcare. He is also a director of Skype Global, and has been since December 2009.
