Forty years leading high-performance teams to pioneer transformative technologies, including Alexa's speech and knowledge systems.
Experience
Executive Roles
Rokt
Chief Product & Engineering Officer
Amazon
Vice President, Alexa Knowledge
Director, Alexa Speech and Language
Nokia
Director, Mobile and Location-based Advertising
Revolabs (acquired by Yamaha)
Vice President of Engineering
Microsoft
Group Engineering Manager (speech)
Unveil Technologies (acquired by Microsoft)
Senior Vice President of Engineering
Voice Signal (acquired by Nuance)
Vice President of Engineering
Turin Networks
Director of Engineering
IronBridge Networks
Director of Engineering
VideoServer
Director of Engineering
Picture Tel/Polycom
Director of Engineering
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Advisory Roles
Companyon Ventures - Venture Partner
Venture Guides - Limited Partner
ScOp Venture Capital - Limited Partner
Bill Barton
Partner
About Me
I’ve spent 40 years leading teams that turn ambitious ideas into real-world technology. From real-time systems and speech recognition to large-scale AI, my focus has always been on solving tough technical challenges while empowering the people who tackle them. I’ve worked across startups and global enterprises like Nokia, Microsoft, and Amazon, growing teams from a handful of engineers to 600+ across multiple locations. Great leadership isn’t about hierarchy or control but about trust, collaboration, and setting teams up for success. Now, I’m focused on sharing what I’ve learned to help companies build, scale, and take on the next big challenge.
Career Highlights
I started my career as a hands-on coder, specializing in real-time systems and digital signal processing. In the 1990s, I worked in videoconferencing and transitioned from contributor to leader. By 1999, I was leading teams building terabit routers and multi-protocol datacom gateways. I later developed speech recognition and NLP solutions at VoiceSignal (acquired by Nuance) and Unveil Technologies (acquired by Microsoft). After leading engineering at Revolabs (acquired by Yamaha) and driving mobile advertising innovation at Nokia, I found my dream job in 2012 when Al Lindsay hired me to lead speech recognition and NLP for Alexa. My team grew from 30 to over 500, building the world’s first far-field speech recognition system and powering Alexa’s voice capabilities across Fire Phone, Fire TV, and Amazon’s mobile app. From 2016 to 2022, I led the development of Alexa’s knowledge graph, scaling services that processed billions of interactions from 100M+ users weekly. After a decade at Amazon, I joined Rokt as Chief Product & Engineering Officer, helping the company scale its machine learning capabilities and nearly double in size and valuation. In 2025, after four decades of full-time work, I transitioned to part-time advising to focus on sharing my experience, supporting teams, and pursuing personal passions.
Techquity Solutions
Success isn’t just about hiring top talent—it’s about building teams that solve complex challenges and create lasting impact. My focus has shifted from the technology itself to developing the kind of high-performance teams that can tackle ambitious goals. A great team isn’t just a collection of experts. It thrives on trust, accountability, and the right balance of autonomy and structure. At Techquity, I help organizations build and scale these teams by sharing the lessons I’ve learned from leading global organizations and driving innovation. The right people, working together in the right way, can accomplish incredible things.
Innovation & Impact
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Developed AI-driven systems, including far-field speech recognition and knowledge graphs that power Alexa.
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Built and scaled global engineering teams, growing organizations from startups to 600+ engineers.
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Awarded over a dozen patents in AI, speech processing, and videoconferencing.
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Led the acquisition and integration of multiple companies into Amazon
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Mentored leaders who have gone on to C-suite roles in top technology companies.