Long serving Snap executive Mary Ritti has resigned from her role as vice president of communications.

Ritti was the ninth employee to join the ranks at Snap and has been with the team since 2012. She also oversaw the company's IPO in 2017.

She's not the first high profile employee to jump ship from Snap; the company also saw global head of sales Jeff Lucas and chief strategy office Imran Khan leave this year. 

Ritti will remain in her role until a suitable replacement is found to take over. 

In an email to Snap employees, Ritti said she wishes to "take a deep breath and explore what's next".

"I’ve never been more passionate about a product or a company and I can say that this has been the most challenging and the most rewarding experience of my career." She wrote. 

A rough year

Snap has had a difficult year between a dwindling users and plummeting revenue predictions. The platform userbase dropped by 3m in Q2. 

eMarketer has also predicted that Snap will generate £68.6m in revenue by the end of 2018, which is a noticeable downsize from the £104.8m that was forecast back in March.

“Snap rolled out its programmatic ad platform in June 2017. While the transition to a self-serve format has increased the number of advertisers, it has also resulted in lower ad prices overall,” said analyst Debra Aho Williamson.

“Programmatic ads are typically cheaper because the automated auction infrastructure reduces (and sometimes eliminates) the need for salespeople to get involved. Some advertisers report strong ROI from programmatic ads on Snapchat, but many others remain skeptical. They are concerned about the size of Snapchat’s audience and feel that measurement and targeting still lag behind Facebook.”