Brian Acton

Executive Chairman

2018 - Current

Cofounder

2009 - 2017

Revolutionizing Mobile Communications

Vice President of Engineering

2006 - 2007

Led the Advertiser and Publisher Applications Group, an organization of 300+ software engineers building frontend web applications, backend infrastructure systems, and internal tools and reports all to provide the best experience for advertisers and publishers online. Championed the use of a rapid iteration framework for fast development and release to production. Launched an innovative mobile application supporting mobile keyword advertising.

Senior Director of Engineering - Yahoo Search Marketing

2005 - 2006

Acted as Chief Architect for Project Panama, an ambitious project to rewrite the entire Yahoo Search Marketing system. Led design reviews and implementation discussions across 35 functional and organizational areas across the project. Shifted responsibility to Chief Program Manager for the remainder of the project. Led a virtual team spanning over 500 engineers worldwide and led the operating team in daily decision making to keep the project on schedule with minimal feature and quality tradeoffs.

Senior Director of Engineering - Yahoo Marketplace

2004 - 2005

Led engineering, quality assurance, and operations for a portfolio of websites including Yahoo Shopping, Travel, Maps, Local, Real Estate, Auctions, Classifieds, Yellow Pages, Tickets, and Pets. Launched new product releases of Yahoo Maps including interactive features, Yahoo Travel including trip planning and research features, Yahoo Shopping including social networking and popular product features.

Director of Engineering - Yahoo Shopping, Yahoo Travel

2003 - 2004

Led engineering, quality assurance, and operations for Yahoo Shopping and Travel. Conducted due diligence, acquisition, and integration of Farechase, a travel fare comparison engine. Developed and recruited talent in India for Yahoo Shopping.

Director of Engineering - Yahoo Shopping

2002 - 2002

Led engineering, quality assurance, and operations for Yahoo Shopping. Drove schedule and timing of the Shopping 4.0 launch which included user interface improvements and a substantial business model migration. Hired and mentored both engineers and engineering managers.

Principal Software Engineer - Yahoo Shopping

1999 - 2002

Led the Books, Music, and Video components of Yahoo Shopping. Tasks included operation and engineering for both frontend and backend components. Heavy data processing of input datasets as well as substantial design and implementation of frontend features and functionality.

Senior Software Engineer - Yahoo Operations

1998 - 1999

Responsible for 24x7 operation of Yahoo websites and backend systems. Tasks included managing triage, diagnosis, and relief of troubled systems. Identified and resolved points of failure in overall systems architecture. Conducted long term planning of several systems colocations across North America. Managed domain name operations and system operations for production systems.

Software Engineer - Yahoo Advertising and Data Processing

1996 - 1998

Prototyped and built several iterations of the Yahoo Advertising system. The present day advertising system has survived for over 10 years at Yahoo and is a critical part of Yahoo infrastructure and intellectual property. Also built and architected Yahoo's first data processing platform for website traffic evaluation and metrics. The data processing system survived for over 10 years and grew in production volume from 4M events per day to over 5B events per day.

Software Engineer

1994 - 1996

Ported components of the PowerTalk and PowerShare software from the Motorola 68k architecture to the IBM PowerPC architecture. Coded functionality directly for the Powertalk 1.5 release including mailbox API functionality. Developed initial prototypes of internet interoperability with the PowerTalk and PowerShare.

QA Engineer

1994 - 1994

Developed test plans, test suites, and test automation for Adobe Acrobat 2.0 release. Primary coverage areas included Macintosh and AppleScript functionality.

Hardware Test Engineer

1993 - 1994

Wrote software stress and accuracy tests for prototype and eventual production hardware of first generation Power Macintoshes. Test software was utilized during the manufacturing process to identify troubled hardware. Hardware coverage areas included graphics and video cards, serial and i/o controllers, memory, and sound controllers.

Systems Administrator

1992 - 1993

Provide system recovery and technical support for Macintosh System 6 and System 7 users. Troubleshoot and repair 10Base2 ethernet network.