Leading Leaders

Brian Pinkerton
General Manager for A9

Brian Pinkerton joined A9.com in 2003 as Principal Engineer. After leaving to start his own company, Brian returned to A9 in 2011 as Chief Architect. Since 2012, Brian has served as General Manager for A9.
Brian brings over 20 years of Search experience to A9. In 1993, Brian created WebCrawler, the first Internet search engine, while working on his Ph.D. at the University of Washington. He subsequently held senior management roles at Excite, Technorati, and Lucid Imagination.
Brian holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science & Engineering from the University of Washington, as well as a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin.

Matt Battles
Vice President of Ad Technologies

Matt Battles serves as A9.com's Vice President of Ad Technologies. Matt joined A9.com in 2004, and has held roles in Finance as well as Sales and Marketing. After leaving to help launch another company in 2007, Matt returned to A9.com in 2010.
Matt brings over 10 years of tech industry experience, within a wide range of disciplines.
Prior to joining A9.com, Matt worked in Business Development at Amazon.com. He also served as COO at Voleon Capital Management LP, currently located in Berkeley, California, where he helped launch the company and its statistical arbitrage trading operations.
Previously, Matt worked at D. E. Shaw & Co., where he focused on the company's internet initiatives; as SVP Product Development at Juno Online Services, he helped launch the company's ISP and the first advertising-supported free e-mail service.
Matt holds an MBA from Stanford University and a BA from Yale University.
The Ad Tech team's engineering, business development and product management groups work exceptionally closely to innovate on behalf of our customers. As a core part of Amazon's advertising initiatives, we move fast and build to incredible scale.
-Matt Battles
Vice President of Ad Technologies

Gautam Bhargava
Vice President of Visual Search

Gautam Bhargava joined A9.com in 2009 as Vice President of Visual Search.
Most recently, Gautam served as CEO of SnapTell, a company he co-founded. Gautam also co-founded Vialto Corporation (acquired by Cisco), where he was the CTO & VP Engineering. In his previous roles, Gautam held senior kernel-engineering and management positions at TimesTen Performance Software, IBM Silicon Valley Lab and Silicon Graphics.
For more than 20 years, Gautam has been a part of teams that build innovative software solutions. Gautam holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science from Iowa State University, and a B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT, Kanpur. He has been granted twenty-one patents as co-inventor in the area of data mining and database technology and published papers in prestigious journals such as TKDE, SIGMOD, etc.
Visual Search at A9 is powering Augmented Reality solutions that let us search and discover the physical world around us by looking through the camera view on our mobile devices. Our solutions combine elements of search, computer vision, cloud computing and mobile technologies to create the best customer experiences.
-Gautam Bhargava
Vice President of Visual Search

Benoit Dupin
Vice President of Search Technology

Benoit Dupin serves as A9.com's Vice President of Search Technologies. He joined A9.com in 2007, and has since held roles in Search Infrastructure, Search Experience as well as Search Relevance. 
Benoit brings over 15 years of international tech industry experience, within a wide range of disciplines. 
Prior to joining A9.com, Benoit worked at HP in the HPUX lab where he held kernel-engineering and management positions in the Virtual Memory team and Process Management team. Previously, Benoit worked at Easyplanet where he launched a community browser and at Canon Research France.
Benoit holds an M.S. in Computer Science from INSA (Institut National des Sciences Appliquées) and a Dea of Computer Science from University of Rennes 1. Benoit also did research on distributed sytems as a Phd Student at INRIA.
A9 Product Search is a small group of remarkably smart people handling complex problems at scale, and enjoying it. We have a major impact on the search experience of millions of customers worldwide, as we help them find what they need.
-Benoit Dupin
Vice President of Search Technology

Dana Friedman
Vice President of Finance

Dana Friedman joined A9.com in 2006 where she serves as Vice President of Finance.
Dana brings over 20 years of finance and operational experience to her role at A9.com. In addition to contributing strategic input for company initiatives, Dana leads financial planning, analysis and accounting for A9.com. Dana also oversees facilities and administration, as well as the Askville team.
Prior to joining A9, Dana worked at Lucasfilm Ltd, where she held various positions including Director of Planning for Lucas Digital Ltd., as well as Visual Effects Producer for Industrial Light and Magic, working on such films as Minority Report andSpace Cowboys. Dana has also held finance roles at Salomon Brothers Inc and at Chiron Corporation (now part of Novartis), a large biotechnology firm.
Dana holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. She also graduated with Highest Honors and Phi Beta Kappa from UC Berkeley, where she earned her A.B. in Economics and Rhetoric.
When you gather extremely talented and committed people together from diverse backgrounds but with a shared vision to create what doesn't yet exist, something quite special happens: it’s actually fun.
-Dana Friedman
Vice President of Finance

Daniel E. Rose
Chief Scientist for Search

 Daniel E. Rose joined A9 in 2007 and serves as A9's Chief Scientist for Search.

Dan has been working in the area of search for 20 years. Prior to A9, he was Director of Search Presentation, Assistance, and Interaction at Yahoo! Inc., and also held key positions at Altavista and at Xigo. Earlier, Dan worked at Apple's Advanced Technology Group, where he led the Information Access Research team, which created desktop search for the Macintosh.

Dan holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive Science and Computer Science and an M.S. in Computer Science, both from UC San Diego, as well as a B.A. in Philosophy from Harvard University. He has published a variety of technical articles, focusing on information retrieval and human-computer interaction, as well as a book based on his doctoral research. Dan has over 20 issued U.S. patents.
In some ways, search is really in its infancy. We've only begun to scratch the surface of what we can do.
-Daniel E. Rose
Chief Scientist for Search

Diana Sutter
Vice President of Human Resources

Diana Sutter joined A9.com in 2003 as Vice President of Human Resources.
Diana brings 20 years of human resources experience to the company where she defines and implements all aspects of HR strategy, operations, and programs.
Prior to joining A9.com, Diana led human resources and organizational development teams for companies such as Netcentives, Post Communications, Inc., Tenth Planet Explorations, and Summit Organization, Inc. Building and implementing human resource and operations infrastructures that can support rapid company growth in addition to effectively orchestrating corporate change is her passion.
Diana holds a B.S. in Human Services from the College of Notre Dame.
A9 is a true powerhouse of talent and expertise, and our team has real impact; so we work hard at maintaining our small company feel: people know each other, collaborate and learn from one another. It is this unusual mix that makes A9 a unique place.
-Diana Sutter
Vice President of Human Resources