Nathan Wrigley spoke with Devin Walker on the Jukebox Podcast about Devin’s move to Automattic to lead Jetpack, the product’s current challenges, and the roadmap ahead.
Background and why Automattic
Devin co-founded GiveWP, built it up until its acquisition by Liquid Web, and has a long history across WordPress development, design, marketing, and support. He also created WP Rollback. After leaving Liquid Web, Matt Mullenweg reached out with opportunities at Automattic, including the chance to lead Jetpack. Rather than starting another company, Devin chose the broader impact and stability of Automattic. He now serves as Artistic Director of Jetpack, responsible for reshaping a product that touches millions of sites.
What Jetpack is and how it’s perceived
Jetpack bundles a wide set of features—stats, backups, security, performance tools, social sharing, forms, VideoPress, SEO, and more. Over time specialist plugins improved in their niches, leaving Jetpack with a reputation as a “jack of all trades, master of none.” Devin’s aim is to narrow focus: double down where Jetpack provides broad, reliable value and accept that very specialized use cases will still need dedicated tools.
Organizational changes shaping development
Automattic moved from product-specific silos to a matrix model where shared architecture, design, and engineering work across WordPress.com, Jetpack, WooCommerce, and other areas. Cross-functional teams now prioritize initiatives—like forms—across the ecosystem. Devin coordinates those initiatives, bringing cohesion and enabling tighter integrations (for example, smoother Jetpack–WooCommerce flows and OAuth-based cloud services).
Product priorities: focus, polish, and outcomes
The immediate mandate is to stop accumulating half-maintained features and instead refine and unify the product. The team is using Jobs to Be Done thinking: design interfaces around user outcomes rather than long lists of toggles. Key near-term priorities are improving forms and SEO, simplifying onboarding and the WordPress.com connection flow, consolidating redundant settings, and clarifying where features live in the UI.
AI as a major frontier
Jetpack already uses AI for things like auto-generated excerpts and featured images, but Devin sees that as the beginning. Automattic has a substantial AI engineering effort and Jetpack will bring many of those capabilities to self-hosted sites. Tools like Telex (block-generation) point to possibilities: generate blocks or UI with a prompt, surface AI across the admin and front end, assist content creation, enable chat-style visitor interactions, and boost conversions through smarter forms and signups. Much of the current AI will be reworked and expanded over the next 8–12 months.
Balancing change with a large installed base
With roughly 4 million installs and deep ties to WordPress.com, Jetpack must avoid widespread regressions. Breaking changes cause poor reviews and support load. Automattic’s monthly release cadence and conservative approach curb disruptive shifts. Devin wants a middle path: be bolder about necessary improvements like clearer onboarding and navigation, but roll them out carefully to prevent outages and negative feedback.
Marketing and perception
Historically Jetpack relied on built-in distribution rather than active marketing. Devin sees the marketplace as more crowded now and wants clearer messaging, refreshed site content, and public demos of engineering and design work. He notes a shortage of marketing attention given Jetpack’s scale and plans to invest more in storytelling and community-facing communication.
Product management and community input
Devin has been running one-on-ones and documenting product histories in a “Connecting the Dots” effort to gather institutional knowledge. Customer research and community feedback will guide consolidation of toggles, navigation improvements, and other UX changes. The team will ask users what outcomes they want and design toward those results.
Where Jetpack could land
If Devin’s priorities succeed, Jetpack can become the go-to all-in-one baseline for users who want to move quickly from a blank site to a credible web presence. It won’t replace advanced niche tools, but for most sites it should offer well-polished forms, CDN and VideoPress, approachable SEO features, and AI-assisted content and site-building tools.
Immediate and medium-term work
Forms are receiving concentrated attention (recent releases already started changes). AI is a major roadmap item with near- and mid-term plans. Onboarding and connection flows have been improved and will be refined further. Marketing and messaging will be updated to reduce confusion and better communicate Jetpack’s value.
Invitation and accountability
Devin invites community feedback via [email protected], jetpack.com/feedback, his Twitter (@innerwebs), and his site devin.org. Nathan suggested checking back in 12 months to measure progress; Devin agreed, with goals like reduced confusion, clearer UI, and improved user sentiment.
Closing
Devin’s leadership emphasizes simplifying and polishing a large, feature-rich product; integrating AI thoughtfully; improving onboarding and marketing; and coordinating work across Automattic’s reorganized teams. The core challenge is unifying Jetpack without breaking the many sites that rely on it—and doing so in close conversation with the community.