Brian Acton is an experienced technology executive who co-founded WhatsApp. He has over 20 years of experience leading engineering teams at major companies. Acton held several senior engineering roles at Yahoo from 1999-2009 where he oversaw large teams and launched new products. He is currently the Vice President of Engineering at WhatsApp, which he co-founded in 2009 to revolutionize mobile communications.

1. Brian Acton
Brian Acton
Summary
Revolutionize the world with innovative technology products and services.
Specialties
-- Business: Large Program Leadership, Technology Mergers and Acquisitions, organizational budgeting and
allocation,
-- Systems: Large Scale Systems Design, Fault Tolerance and Redundancy, Budgeting and cost analysis.
-- Operating Systems: FreeBSD, Linux, Windows, MacOS X
-- Languages: C, C++, Perl, PHP, Erlang, Java, Python, JavaScript, ActionScript
-- Databases: Oracle, MySQL
Experience
Brian Acton at WhatsApp Inc.
November 2009 - Present (4 years 1 month)
Revolutionizing Mobile Communications
Vice President of Engineering at Yahoo! Inc.
2006 - October 2007 (1 year)
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 at Yahoo!
2005 - 2006 (1 year)
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 at Yahoo!
Page1

2. 2004 - 2005 (1 year)
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 at Yahoo!
2003 - 2004 (1 year)
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 at Yahoo!
2002 - 2002 (less than a year)
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 at Yahoo!
1999 - 2002 (3 years)
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 at Yahoo!
1998 - 1999 (1 year)
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 at Yahoo!
1996 - 1998 (2 years)
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 at Apple Computer
August 1994 - February 1996 (1 year 7 months)
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
Page2

3. functionality. Developed initial prototypes of internet interoperability with the PowerTalk and PowerShare.
QA Engineer at Adobe
May 1994 - August 1994 (4 months)
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 at Apple
May 1993 - May 1994 (1 year 1 month)
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 at Rockwell International
May 1992 - May 1993 (1 year 1 month)
Provide system recovery and technical support for Macintosh System 6 and System 7 users. Troubleshoot and
repair 10Base2 ethernet network.
Skills & Expertise
Perl
Erlang
PHP
Oracle
MySQL
Python
Java
C
C++
FreeBSD
Linux
Android
Apache
Emacs
Education
Stanford University
BS, Computer Science, 1991 - 1994
Activities and Societies: Residential Computing Consultant
University of Pennsylvania
Economics, Computer Science, 1990 - 1991
Activities and Societies: Benjamin Franklin Scholars Program
Page3

4. University of Central Florida
Engineering, 1988 - 1988
Activities and Societies: Summer Scholars Program
Honors and Awards
Yahoo Superstar 2007
Interests
Ultimate Frisbee
Skiing
Snowboarding
Movie Watching
Reading
Page4

5. Brian Acton
Brian Acton
Contact Brian on LinkedIn
Page5