Devin Walker, recently named Artistic Director (head) of Jetpack at Automattic, joined the Jukebox Podcast to discuss his WordPress background, why he took the role, the challenges Jetpack faces, and his vision for its future.
Background and decision to join Automattic
Devin has 16 years in the WordPress ecosystem, co-founding GiveWP in 2014 and growing it until its acquisition by Liquid Web. He’s worked across development, design, marketing, and customer support, and created tools like WP Rollback. After leaving Liquid Web in August 2025, a conversation with Matt Mullenweg led to the Jetpack opportunity. Devin weighed starting another independent business against taking a high-impact role inside Automattic. He chose Automattic for the scale, potential to influence a product that reaches millions, and the chance to work within a company he’d long respected.
The scope and challenge of Jetpack
Jetpack is uniquely broad: stats, backups, security, performance, social sharing, forms, VideoPress, SEO, and more. That breadth has made it divisive—“jack of all trades, master of none.” Devin acknowledges Jetpack can’t and shouldn’t aim to outcompete deeply specialized plugins in every niche. Instead, Jetpack should excel for the majority of users (e.g., forms that satisfy 98% of sites) while acknowledging advanced edge cases may need dedicated tools.
He noted Jetpack still offers enormous value—free CDN, VideoPress, and other integrations—which can be an effective on-ramp. But some areas, like SEO and forms, need polish. Other modules that sit unused should be re-evaluated: either improve them or sunset them.
Organizational changes and how Jetpack will work
Automattic is shifting from a traditional functional structure to a more matrixed model. Rather than silos where Jetpack had a dedicated dev and design team, there’s now shared architecture and cross-product collaboration among teams that handle .com, Jetpack, WooCommerce, and other products. This structure aims to make products work more seamlessly together.
Devin is leading a major forms upgrade and is impressed by the engineering talent he’s found at Automattic. The new approach enables tighter integration—e.g., Jetpack and WooCommerce can provide combined benefits when connected—while maintaining user choice (Automattic won’t force a login to use WooCommerce, though OAuth is needed for some cloud-backed features).
Focusing, simplifying, and improving UX
A major problem Devin sees is complexity and confusing UI. Jetpack has multiple places to toggle modules, inconsistent flows, and surprising behavior—especially for non-technical users. One immediate priority is simplifying onboarding and connection flows so users understand what Jetpack does and what they gain by connecting to wordpress.com.
Devin is applying frameworks like Jobs to Be Done to view the product from customer perspectives and identify the real outcomes users are hiring Jetpack for. He wants to consolidate toggles, clean up interface quirks, and reduce friction so a vanilla WordPress site with Jetpack feels coherent and useful for most users.
Balancing speed and caution at scale
Jetpack has roughly 4 million core installs. That scale means releases must be cautious—breaking changes generate negative reviews and lost trust. Automattic currently ships monthly releases and must balance being aggressive about improvements with avoiding regressions that alienate users. Devin plans to be deliberate about this, using phased rollouts and better onboarding to avoid surprises while still moving forward.
AI as a major frontier
AI is a central focus for Jetpack’s near-term roadmap. Devin described Jetpack’s current, relatively discreet AI features—content assistance like writing excerpts and generating featured images—and said those are just the beginning. There’s a large team (>50 engineers) working on AI across Automattic, and Jetpack will be the path to bring many .com AI capabilities to self-hosted WordPress.
Possible directions include richer content generation, admin tools that help with conversion and engagement (newsletters, pre-sales chat, forms), and block generation capabilities via tools like Telex. Devin envisions AI as glue that binds Jetpack modules together, making the whole experience more cohesive and enabling new workflows such as on-the-fly block creation and advanced content companions integrated across the admin.
Marketing and perception
Devin believes Jetpack’s marketing has lagged behind its technical work. Historically, Jetpack benefited from being an Automattic-first, highly visible product. Today, the WordPress marketplace is crowded and specialized competitors invest heavily in focused marketing. To change perception, Jetpack needs stronger storytelling, refreshed messaging, and more marketing talent. Devin intends to push for increased marketing investment and to publish more of the impressive internal work already happening at Automattic.
Community feedback and transparency
Devin is actively gathering feedback through internal P2s and external channels. He’s published a P2 post called “Connecting the Dots” to map expertise and history across teams. For users, he invited feedback to [email protected], jetpack.com/feedback, or via his Twitter (@innerwebs) and website (devin.org). He emphasizes the need to involve users in design decisions and to avoid working in a vacuum.
Goals and next steps
Short-term priorities include improving onboarding, refining forms, consolidating toggles and UI, and laying groundwork for a broader AI-driven experience. Devin wants to raise Jetpack’s review score, reduce breakage, and make the plugin’s value clearer to new and existing users. He suggested checking back in 12 months to assess progress.
Conclusion
Devin stepped into Jetpack to take on a high-visibility, high-impact product with many existing strengths and significant areas for improvement. His plan focuses on clarity, user-centered design, stronger marketing, cross-product collaboration, and an ambitious AI roadmap. With a mix of careful releases and strategic improvements, he aims to make Jetpack a cleaner, more compelling suite for the majority of WordPress users.
