Sprinklr, a social media management and marketing firm that counts Amazon, Nike, McDonald's and Microsoft among its many Fortune 500 clients, has hired Dan Haley to serve as the New York-based company's first general counsel and corporate secretary.

Haley, a cancer survivor and triathlete, joins Sprinklr as its annual revenue has grown to more than $300 million and as it prepares for an initial public offering, according to a spokeswoman for the company. He officially started on Sept. 3, but Sprinklr announced his appointment on Thursday. 

"I view my job as making sure, if and when we're ready to pull the trigger on that [IPO], the company's not only ready but more than ready and can roll into all the behaviors and obligations that attach to a public company," Haley said in an interview. 

He added Sprinklr has a solid six-member legal team in place. But he said the firm's execs recognized that it was "time to upgrade the legal function and make sure the company's ready from a structure standpoint and a process standpoint for whatever the next phase of its evolution is." 

Haley is a Harvard Law School alum who began his law career in 2001 as an associate at Goodwin Procter, following a stint in politics, first as an assistant for the 1996 Republican National Convention then as a special assistant for former Republican Party chairman Jim Nicholson, according to his LinkedIn profile. 

He went on to serve briefly as a special assistant district attorney for the Middlesex County District Attorney's Office in Massachusetts before being appointed deputy chief of staff for Gov. Mitt Romney. Haley went back into law in 2007 as a partner for McDermott Will & Emery. But he didn't leave politics behind. In 2009, he joined current Gov. Charlie Baker's gubernatorial campaign as treasurer.

In 2012, he entered the in-house realm as vice president of government and regulatory affairs and assistant general counsel for Athenahealth Inc., a health information technology company headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts. He moved up the ranks over the next six years, most recently serving as the company's senior VP and chief legal and administrative officer. 

At Athenahealth, Haley was responsible for ensuring that the company, which operates a massive database of patient medical records, followed data privacy regulations. He said he's bringing that data privacy and regulatory experience to Sprinklr, which has 1,600 employees in 15 countries and works with more than 1,200 brands in 150 countries. 

"Making sure that the company runs itself with the strictest level of adherence to all the various rules that we have to abide by is crucially important to the business, our credibility and our clients. It's core to the company's DNA," Haley said.  

Sprinklr founder and CEO Ragy Thomas said in a prepared statement that Haley is committed to "upholding the highest ethical standards" and has a "deep understanding of the particular challenges faced by software companies managing an extensive amount of data." 

Earlier this month, Sprinklr was involved in a bit of a controversy after several reports connected the company to Twitter accounts of Amazon employees known as "FC ambassadors," who were posting positive messages about the company after it was accused of mistreating warehouse workers. 

Amazon uses Sprinklr software to schedule the posting of social media content "in a coordinated way at scale across social channels," according to Rachel Alvarez, a spokeswoman for Sprinklr. She noted that Sprinklr is not involved in creating the content that Amazon publishes on social media.  

"Sprinklr's platform is helpful for large companies like Amazon who need a single platform to help them manage multiple social media accounts and a large number of people with access to those accounts," she added.