Rokt, an e-commerce technology company that uses machine learning and AI to make transactions more relevant for shoppers, announced the appointment of Bill Barton as Chief Operating Officer. Barton previously served as the company’s Chief Product and Engineering Officer and also acted as a strategic advisor to the business.
In his new role, Barton will oversee Rokt’s People, Security, and Legal functions. The company said the People organization will now unify talent acquisition, people operations, employment legal, and people business partners under a single leadership structure. Security and Legal will complement the portfolio, supporting the company’s efforts to attract and develop talent, safeguard its products, and manage risk while maintaining operational speed.
Barton will also continue to lead Rokt’s Swarm initiative, a cross-functional group focused on the company’s highest-priority product development programs. The initiative is part of Rokt’s broader strategy to create a flatter and more agile engineering organization.
Barton brings more than 40 years of product and engineering leadership experience to the position. Before joining Rokt, he spent a decade at Amazon, where he was one of the original architects of Alexa and led teams responsible for spoken language understanding and knowledge capabilities. Earlier in his career, he held senior leadership roles at NAVTEQ, Nokia, Revolabs, and Microsoft. Barton earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard University.
Bruce Buchanan, CEO of Rokt, said Barton’s experience solving complex challenges across technology and organizational systems makes him well suited for the COO role as the company continues to evolve its operations in the AI era.
KEY QUOTES:
“Over the past decade I’ve become increasingly focused on how you actually scale a team’s potential through culture, organization design, and removing the barriers that slow people down. AI is making that work fundamentally more technical. The question of how you build an organization that fully unlocks what AI makes possible requires the same rigor you’d bring to any hard engineering challenge.”
Bill Barton, Chief Operating Officer, Rokt
“Bill has spent his career solving hard problems at the intersection of technology and human systems, from building Alexa to leading R&D here at Rokt. The COO role sits at the intersection of our people, our risk posture, and our ability to operate at speed. His combination of technical depth and genuine passion for organizational development makes him exactly the right person for it. The way he thinks about AI’s impact on how teams work and what they’re capable of is precisely the lens we need on these functions right now.”
Bruce Buchanan, CEO, Rokt
