San Francisco Bay Area
- Current
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- Engineering Director at Google
- Past
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- Technical Fellow at eBay, Inc.
- Sr. Director, Research Labs & Finding at eBay Inc.
- Distinguished Architect, Advanced Technology Group at eBay Inc
- Owner, Chief Consultant at BayAreaBrains (Sole Proprietorship)
- Director of Technology at BigVine Inc.
- Web Production Manager at AltaVista
- Radiation Safety Officer and Sr. Nuclear Reactor Operator at Worcester Polytechnic Institute
- Recommended
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34 people have recommended Eric - Connections
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Eric Billingsley’s Summary
Have helped two companies, eBay and AltaVista, dramatically scale their infrastructure during times of exponential growth. During this process, have had the opportunity to develop skills in technical, financial and leadership areas, and led teams of highly talented individuals from many disciplines. Have been motivated by the challenges of a fast-paced and growing business with technology at its core, and enjoy building self-motivated teams that innovate for the business and inspire those around them to succeed.
Have extremely broad experience leading teams of the following: Strategists, Architects, Researchers, Infrastructure Engineers, Search Engine Engineers, User Interface Designers, Catalog Infrastructure Engineers, Machine Learning Experts, Asset Management, Logistics, Datacenter Architects, Analysts, Networking Engineers, Database Administrators, Messaging Systems Engineers, System Administrators, Desktop Support, and even Nuclear Reactor Operators
Eric Billingsley’s Specialties:
Leadership, mentoring, people development, search technology, high availability, high performance computing, complex adaptive systems, server architecture, networking, C++, datacenter design, green technologies
Eric Billingsley’s Experience
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Engineering Director
Google
(Public Company; GOOG; Internet industry)
July 2009 — Present (5 months)
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Technical Fellow
eBay, Inc.
(Public Company; eBay; Internet industry)
February 2007 — July 2009 (2 years 6 months)
As one of three Technical Fellows at eBay, my duty is to use technology to find solutions to the challenges of a dynamic and rapidly growing company like eBay. Currently focusing on efforts in Search, Product Optimization, and IT.
The most interesting projects so far involve:
• Modeling the complex ecosystem of eBay as a biological system and using the concepts of evolution to optimize the page construction for positive activities
• Introducing new green technologies and concepts into the eBay datacenters
• Forming the Datacenter Management Alliance, a consortium of end-users working together to build a consistent opensource framework for managing the entire lifecycle of complex systems
• Driving the development of cheap-to-cool servers to improve their overall efficiency and thereby reduce the cost to the business while reducing greenhouse emissions -
Sr. Director, Research Labs & Finding
eBay Inc.
(Public Company; eBay; Internet industry)
July 2005 — April 2007 (1 year 10 months)
eBay Research Labs is dedicated to promoting innovation at eBay in every facet of our work. We built a team of talented research scientists from many disciplines working together to define the future of commerce. We also managed a research rotation program that hosted engineers from all of eBay Technology. Research projects in the team helped define major aspects of the technology vision for eBay, and in many cases the projects we completed became the basis for product direction.
Search Backend was responsible for the development and maintenance of the search engine I helped build. We worked to turn what had historically been a problem area for eBay into a fundamental building block for the future of the business. We also completed several infrastructure projects during this time that reduced the cost of the platform by 15x, and improved the resiliency of the system significantly.
Catalogs and Data Tools were teams responsible for creating, maintaining and managing the systems that run the eBay finding and selling experiences. We created tools for the business to help steer the site by building out data in various categories of inventory. -
Distinguished Architect, Advanced Technology Group
eBay Inc
(Public Company; eBay; Internet industry)
January 2002 — July 2005 (3 years 7 months)
Responsible for producing and investigating technologies that enabled eBay to expand rapidly and give functionality to our users that is not available anywhere else.
Most significant accomplishment during this time would be the Voyager Search Engine. Was one of two key developers/architects of the search engine. Voyager is a commerce oriented search engine that is more than capable of scaling to the needs of eBay for query performance, has real-time updating, and a flexible attribute storage capability with clustering and relevance capabilities unlike anything else in the world. At the same time, we reduced the cost of search for eBay by 10x and introduced features and extensibility beyond any product on the market today. -
Owner, Chief Consultant
BayAreaBrains (Sole Proprietorship)
(Sole Proprietorship; Myself Only; Internet industry)
January 2001 — December 2001 (1 year )
IT consultant in Paris and the San Francisco Bay Area.
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Director of Technology
BigVine Inc.
(Internet industry)
April 1999 — December 2000 (1 year 9 months)
Built a world class trading platform and corporate infrastructure while minimizing costs and maximizing flexibility, scalability, and security.
We built banking level security into an online application. The infrastructure we built was reviewed by American Express for security and availability and found to be acceptable for a partnership opportunity. We were the only startup at the time that was able to accomplish this. -
Web Production Manager
AltaVista
(Privately Held; CMGI; Internet industry)
December 1996 — April 1999 (2 years 5 months)
Managed a team of dedicated web developers for one of the highest trafficked sites in the World.
Recruited top quality designers, engineers and artists to build an internal design group capable of taking AltaVista into the next era of the Web.
During tenure, released Babelfish, MyAltaVista, and two redesigns of the AltaVista search experience. -
Radiation Safety Officer and Sr. Nuclear Reactor Operator
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
(Educational Institution; Higher Education industry)
January 1993 — December 1996 (4 years )
Responsible for the safe use of radioative materials and machines in chemistry, physics and biology laboratories on campus. Also responsible for training and reporting to the Radiation Safety Board and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Also a licensed Sr. Nuclear reactor operator for WPI's 10kW open pool research reactor.
While working in the capacity of the RSO, I created the most complete radiation safety website in the country with procedures, policies and federal regulations. This site began to be used by research facilities around the country and led me to a career working with some of the greatest Internet companies in history.
Additional Information
Eric Billingsley’s Websites:
Eric Billingsley’s Groups:
IEEE, CIO Council, CTO Forum, Datacenter Management Alliance, TED
Eric Billingsley’s Honors:
14 Out of This World Awards at eBay
Patent Awarded, "Method and system for monitoring user interaction with a computer", Nov 21 2006
