Kail will also hold the title of senior vice president for infrastructure and will lead Yahoo's IT and data centre operations, reporting to chief executive Marissa Mayer.
"The strength of our technical infrastructure is critical as we aim to deliver the best possible user and advertiser experiences," Mayer said in a statement.
"It also ensures that Yahoos have the tools and technology necessary to execute.... Mike has the perfect combination of experience and vision to lead our IT and infrastructure to even greater global reach and scale."
Kail was vice president of IT Operations at Netflix and previously worked at Attensity, where he was responsible for the Americas data centre operations team. He has a bachelor's degree in computer science from Iowa State University.
The hiring is the latest by Mayer, hired from Google two years ago to revive the fortunes or the Internet pioneer.
Mayer is putting a heavy emphasis on mobile access and media as it seeks to counter Google and its popular YouTube video service.
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