Nathan Wrigley hosts the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern, focused on WordPress topics. In episode #194 he speaks with Devin Walker, the new Artistic Director (head) of Jetpack at Automattic. Devin is co‑founder of GiveWP, creator of WP Rollback, and has experience across development, design, marketing, and customer success. He joined Automattic after GiveWP was acquired and later leaving Liquid Web, choosing Jetpack for the scale and opportunity to make broad impact.
Why Devin joined
Devin weighed returning to startup life against joining Automattic. Building a new product carries risk and personal cost; leading Jetpack presented a rare chance to influence a product that touches millions of WordPress sites and to work inside a company he respected. He accepted the role because of the scale, the challenge, and the ability to access the levers necessary for change.
What Jetpack is and the main challenge
Jetpack bundles many features: stats, backups, security, speed optimizations, social sharing, forms, VideoPress, SEO, and more. Over time specialized third‑party products have advanced, making it difficult for one suite to be best at everything. Devin describes Jetpack as “jack of all trades, master of none” and believes focus is required: raise the quality of core experiences rather than trying to outcompete niche, best‑in‑class tools in every area.
Focus and prioritization
Devin’s aim is to bring clarity and focus to Jetpack. Some features are already strong and should be polished; others are basic or rarely used and may need to be rethought or removed. The goal is to satisfy the majority of users (e.g., forms that cover common needs) while recognizing a small percentage may still require specialized plugins for advanced cases.
Organizational changes at Automattic
Automattic is shifting from functional silos to a matrix model: shared architecture and designers work across products such as wordpress.com, Jetpack, and WooCommerce. This cross‑product collaboration aims to make integrations smoother and products work together more coherently. Devin leads the forms initiative and notes a dedicated team of strong engineers is actively improving forms now, with releases already underway.
Jetpack and WooCommerce
Jetpack’s cloud services provide much of its “secret sauce.” Devin explains some benefits for integrated experiences will require connecting to wordpress.com via OAuth, but Automattic won’t force connections for every use case. The closer collaboration between Jetpack and other Automattic products should make combined workflows (like running WooCommerce with Jetpack features) more valuable.
AI ambitions
AI is a major focus. Jetpack already offers content assist features—auto‑generated excerpts, featured images, and other editor helpers—but what exists now is just a beginning. A large engineering effort is underway to expand AI capabilities: content creation, Telex‑style block generation, admin‑side helpers, visitor‑facing tools (conversion, presales chat, newsletter prompts), and tighter integration with WordPress capabilities. Devin sees AI as glue that can bind product pieces together and enable site owners, especially nontechnical users, to create custom blocks or experiences on the fly.
Product, UX, and onboarding
Devin emphasizes improving onboarding and simplifying the user interface. Jetpack currently has multiple areas where modules are toggled on and off, duplicated controls, and confusing flows—especially for newcomers. The strategy includes Jobs‑to‑Be‑Done exercises to design from a user’s perspective, consolidating toggles, clarifying navigation, and removing friction in the connect/authorize flow. Recent improvements to the connect experience increased successful connections; more such wins are planned.
Marketing and perception
Historically Jetpack benefited from Automattic’s brand and built‑in momentum. Today the plugin market is crowded and marketing matters. Devin plans to increase marketing focus—clarifying what Jetpack is, updating messaging and site content, and making internal P2 knowledge public where appropriate. He observed a relative shortage of marketers compared to engineering and intends to strengthen that area to change community perception and adoption.
Scale and caution
With around 4 million core installs, changes must be handled carefully. Monthly release cycles, broad user impact, and integration with wordpress.com require a cautious approach to avoid regressions that produce negative reviews. Devin seeks a balance: be cautious enough to protect existing sites, but aggressive enough to ship meaningful improvements that raise satisfaction and ratings over time.
Community feedback and transparency
Devin intends to solicit user feedback widely and iterate transparently rather than redesign in isolation. He acknowledges many obvious low‑hanging UX fixes—consolidating settings, reducing toggles, making one place for each capability—and plans to use community input to guide those changes.
Next steps and contact
Devin is focused on the near‑term roadmap for forms, expanding AI capabilities, improving onboarding and UX, and beefing up marketing. He invites feedback at [email protected], jetpack.com/feedback, via his Twitter @innerwebs, or devin.org. Nathan suggests checking back in 12 months to track progress; Devin welcomes the follow‑up and expects significant visible changes in that time.
Summary
Devin Walker’s leadership aims to refocus Jetpack: sharpen the core experiences, reduce confusion, leverage AI to connect and extend capabilities, improve onboarding and marketing, and do all of it carefully given Jetpack’s scale. The vision is to make Jetpack a coherent, polished suite that reliably gets most sites to a strong baseline while integrating smoothly with Automattic’s broader ecosystem.
