Nathan Wrigley interviews Devin Walker on the Jukebox Podcast about Devin’s new role leading Jetpack at Automattic, the plugin’s challenges, and its future direction.
Devin’s background and decision to join Automattic
Devin Walker co-founded GiveWP and grew it from 2014 until its acquisition by Liquid Web. He has a broad WordPress background in development, design, marketing, and customer support, and created WP Rollback. After leaving Liquid Web, Matt Mullenweg reached out with opportunities at Automattic, including Jetpack. Devin weighed building another business versus joining Automattic. At this stage in life he chose the impact and stability of Automattic, accepting the role (officially “Artistic Director of Jetpack”) to lead and reshape a highly visible product that touches millions of sites.
The scope and perception of Jetpack
Jetpack bundles many features: stats, backups, security, performance optimizations, social sharing, forms, VideoPress, SEO, and more. Historically, it offered a compelling, broad set of tools, but over the years specialist third-party plugins have advanced in their areas. That left Jetpack perceived as “jack of all trades, master of none.” Devin’s goal is to bring focus—recognize where Jetpack excels, level up key features to meet typical user needs, and accept that very specialized edge cases might still require dedicated solutions from other vendors.
Organizational changes and how Jetpack is built now
Automattic has shifted from a strictly functional org (teams dedicated to individual products) to a matrix-style organization where shared architecture, design, and engineering work across .com, Jetpack, WooCommerce, and other products. This change aims to make features and experiences cohesive across the ecosystem. Instead of siloed Jetpack teams, engineers and designers from shared teams now work on prioritized initiatives (for example, forms). Devin leads those initiatives, coordinating across the broader org. This also means benefits for integrated use cases—Jetpack and WooCommerce can work more seamlessly together when needed, with OAuth-based connections used to enable cloud services and shared capabilities.
Priorities: focus, polish, and user experience
Devin emphasizes that Jetpack should stop accumulating semi-maintained features and instead refine and unify the product. The team is practicing Jobs to Be Done thinking to understand user goals and rework interfaces around outcomes rather than a long list of toggles. The immediate priorities include upgrading core pieces like forms and SEO, simplifying onboarding and the connection flow to WordPress.com, consolidating redundant toggles and settings, and reducing confusion around where to find features.
AI as a major frontier
Jetpack already includes some AI-assisted features (e.g., auto-generated excerpts and featured images). Devin describes that as only the beginning. Automattic has a substantial engineering effort (50+ engineers) working on AI at .com, and Jetpack will be the bridge bringing those capabilities to self-hosted WordPress sites. Devin references Telex—Automattic’s block-generation tooling—as an example of what’s possible: use a prompt to generate a block or UI element on the fly. Jetpack could surface AI across the admin and the front end: content creation, block building, visitor interactions (chat, pre-sales help), and conversion tools (newsletter signups, forms). Much of the current AI implementation will be reworked and extended over the next 8–12 months.
Balancing innovation with a large user base
Jetpack’s core has roughly 4 million installs, and it also integrates heavily with WordPress.com’s user base. That scale requires caution: breaking changes produce negative reviews and support issues. Automattic releases monthly and tends to be conservative about disruptive UI or functionality shifts. Devin wants to balance careful rollout with being more aggressive about improvements—shipping clearer onboarding, better product navigation, and targeted upgrades—while avoiding widespread regressions. He notes that many one-star reviews stem from “breaking” behavior and perceived lack of support; improving stability and clarity should help raise Jetpack’s reputation and rating.
Marketing and perception
Devin observed Jetpack’s marketing had slowed; historically the product relied on built-in adoption, but the marketplace is now crowded and more active marketing is needed. Devin plans to invest in clearer messaging, updated website content, and public communication of what Jetpack is and can do. He also sees opportunities to publish more of the internal P2 posts and demos that showcase engineering and design work, to better inform and excite the community. Devin also mentions an apparent shortage of marketers relative to the product’s size and wants to address that.
Product management approach and community input
Devin has been holding one-on-ones across teams, documenting product histories and the current landscape (a “Connecting the Dots” approach) to gather expertise about various Jetpack components. He intends to use user feedback prominently: consolidating toggles, improving navigation, and simplifying the admin experience will be informed by customer research and community input. The team will ask users what they want and use Jobs to Be Done to design around outcomes.
Where Jetpack could land
If Jetpack becomes a more cohesive, well-marketed, and polished suite, it could be the default go-to for many users who want an all-in-one experience to move from a blank site to a credible, functional web presence quickly. That doesn’t mean Jetpack will replace niche tools where advanced features are required, but for the majority of sites Jetpack aims to provide a strong baseline: forms that meet most needs, built-in CDN and VideoPress, approachable SEO enhancements, and AI tools that smooth content creation and site building.
Immediate and future work
Forms are getting significant attention—15.2 introduced changes and subsequent releases will continue improving forms. AI work is a major roadmap item with near-term and medium-term plans to substantially rework and extend capabilities. Onboarding and connection flows have already seen improvements and will be refined further to help users understand the value of connecting to WordPress.com/Jetpack. Marketing and site messaging will be refreshed to better tell the story of Jetpack and reduce confusion.
Invitation for feedback and accountability
Devin invites community feedback—positive and negative—via [email protected], jetpack.com/feedback, his Twitter (@innerwebs), and his site devin.org. Nathan suggests checking back in 12 months to evaluate progress; Devin agrees to revisit results and measure outcomes like reduced confusion, improved UI, and better user sentiment.
Closing
Devin’s leadership of Jetpack focuses on simplifying and polishing a vast suite of features, integrating AI thoughtfully, improving onboarding and marketing, and coordinating across Automattic’s reorganized teams. The challenge is to unify a complex product without breaking the many sites that rely on it, and to make Jetpack more understandable and valuable for the majority of WordPress users. Feedback from the community will be an important part of that journey.
