# Jeremy Herve (@jeremy.herve.bzh)

Profile: https://sifa.id/p/jeremy.herve.bzh
Headline: Engineering Team Lead at Automattic | Building creator tools for WordPress and the Fediverse

## About

Fourteen years at Automattic, across a bunch of very different roles, and the thing driving me has stayed the same: I care about the people on the other end of the software.

It started in support, listening to customers and working to fix what they came to us with. Leading a team now, I do a version of the same thing. I listen to the people I work with, and I try to get the right conversations happening between them.

I care a lot about the open web, and about tools that let people own their content and reach an audience without renting their presence from someone else.

The other constant is that Automattic has always given me room to learn. That's really why I've been able to move from support to quality to engineering to leading a team; I never stop learning!

## Experience

- **Release Manager at Findworks Technologies - liligo.com** (2009 – 2010)
  Tested and managed the daily release process for the travel search engine, coordinating changes between developers and the wider team.
- **Quality Controller at Findworks Technologies - liligo.com** (2009 – 2009)
  Ensured a good customer experience on the liligo.com travel search engine through testing and monitoring.
- **After Sales Order Manager at Steelcase** (2007 – 2009)
  Managed delivery of replacement products to clients across Europe using SAP, communicating with customers in French and English.
- **Staff Engineer at Automattic** (2023 – 2025)
  Worked across the Jetpack products and WordPress.com, mentoring engineers and helping new contributors find their footing. A lot of that meant sharing the history behind the codebase, the inner workings and the reasoning behind past decisions, so people came away understanding why things were built the way they were.
  
  I also acted as a bridge between teams. When work overlapped, I worked to ensure teams could be productive and work well together, and to keep information flowing between ongoing projects so nobody got surprised mid-project.
- **Engineering Team Lead at Automattic** (2025 – present)
  I lead a team working on the WordPress.com Reader, Newsletters, and the Fediverse work that connects WordPress.com to the wider open web, including ActivityPub and AT Protocol interop.
  
  My job is mostly about the people. I help everyone on the team grow in their role and do their best work, support them through the hard stretches, and help them prioritize. I jump into product and technical discussions with stakeholders across the company, bringing the product and technical context the team needs to be well represented. When someone's blocked, I help get them unblocked and protect their focus so they can keep moving.
  
  I also stay hands-on, doing technical triage and jumping into project work as an engineer when that's where I'm useful.
- **Quality Team Lead at Automattic** (2022 – 2023)
  Led a small quality team set up to work closely with the engineering teams building Jetpack and its infrastructure. We maintained and developed the testing and reporting infrastructure, and worked to make quality a shared value across teams, something every engineer felt responsible for, not a separate step owned by one team.
- **Software Engineer at Automattic** (2018 – 2022)
  I was the person who didn't shy away from the unglamorous work. I handled bugs in older parts of the codebase, improved the quality of crummy old code, and took on maintenance that needed doing. I focused on the parts that don't get much attention but that everything else depends on.
  
  I also owned the Jetpack plugin's monthly releases and built processes to make them smoother, including an internal beta testing program. I monitored each release, watched customer and support feedback as it came in, and moved quickly when something needed fixing. When security releases were needed, I coordinated those too.
  
  Jetpack is one of the most popular WordPress plugins, used by millions, and Automattic is a high-profile name in the WordPress community. All of this had to be done at scale and in a way the community could respect. That meant communicating publicly about new features, doing developer relations work, and handling the occasional crisis: reaching out and answering questions when a release caused problems.
- **Project Manager at Findworks Technologies - liligo.com** (2011 – 2012)
  Managed projects supporting the brand's growth in France and other European markets, working closely with product managers and developers on specifications, implementation, and SEO.
- **Community Manager at Findworks Technologies - liligo.com** (2010 – 2012)
  Built liligo.com's social media presence and ran its WordPress corporate blogs. This is where my developer relations and community work first started.
- **Technical Support Engineer at Automattic** (2012 – 2018)
  This is where I started at Automattic. It began as customer support and quickly turned technical, taking on the harder problems before they needed to go to engineering. From there it grew into mentoring and leading our Jetpack support team.
  
  Over time the role kept widening. I split my days between handling technical support, guiding support folks by explaining the inner workings of our products, fixing bugs reported by customers, improving our developer documentation for external developers, and acting as the liaison between support and engineering. Even in these years I was triaging the Jetpack repo, testing changes, and submitting fixes, the engineering work that the later title would make official.
  
  Underneath all of it, the job hadn't changed since my first support ticket: pay attention to what people actually need, and make sure that knowledge reaches whoever can act on it.

## Education

- **Budapesti Kommunikációs és Üzleti Főiskola** — New media Graphism and Communication Diploma (2009 – 2010)
- **Institut Universitaire de Brest** — DUT (2002 – 2004)

## Skills

- Jetpack
- Engineering Support
- Project Engineering
- Engineering Leadership
- Software Development
- Functional Specifications
- Project Management
- Management
- Web 2.0
- User Experience
- Web Project Management
- Developer Relations
- WordPress
- Web Development
- Cross-functional Coordination
- Team Leadership
- WordPress.com

## Projects

- **Jetpack by WordPress.com** — http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/jetpack/
  Supercharge your WordPress site with powerful features previously only available to WordPress.com users.
- **ATmosphere WordPress plugin** — https://wordpress.org/plugins/atmosphere/
  ATmosphere turns your WordPress site into a first-class citizen of the AT Protocol.
- **ActivityPub WordPress plugin** — https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/
  With the ActivityPub plugin installed, your WordPress blog itself functions as a federated profile.
- **WordPress.com Reader** — https://wordpress.com/reader
  A calm place to catch up on the blogs you follow, without an algorithm deciding what you see. You can follow WordPress.com blogs, Jetpack blogs, any blog with an RSS feed. You can also read your timelines on Bluesky, on Mastodon, and across the Fediverse from the WordPress.com Reader.
- **Jetpack Newsletter** — https://wordpress.com/newsletter/
  Your newsletter’s forever home. Own your content, data, and audience without being locked in. Spend time building your brand, not someone else’s platform.

## Publications

- Putting the WordPress block editor on the AT Protocol — skypress.blog (https://skypress.blog/@jeremy.herve.bzh/tribulations-of-a-software-engineer/3mnzu7nrqkk2i)
- Putting the WordPress block editor on the AT Protocol — herve.bzh (https://herve.bzh/wordpress-block-editor-at-protocol/)
- Ultra-soft potato burger buns — herve.bzh (https://herve.bzh/ultra-soft-potato-burger-buns/)
- The web was always social — herve.bzh (https://herve.bzh/the-web-was-always-social/)
- Saison des foins — herve.bzh (https://herve.bzh/saison-des-foins/)
- Signing homework — herve.bzh (https://herve.bzh/signing-homework/)
- Radical Speed Month, and a new Reader — herve.bzh (https://herve.bzh/radical-speed-month-and-a-new-reader/)
- The Internet Archive never disappoints… :) — herve.bzh (https://herve.bzh/the-internet-archive-never-disappoints/)
- Introducing PsdRecipes: all you need to know about Photoshop! — herve.bzh (https://herve.bzh/introducing-psdrecipes-all-know-about-photoshop/)

## Languages

- English (full_professional)
- French (native)
- Hungarian (limited_working)

## Other profiles

- fediverse: https://herve.bzh/@jeremy/
- github: https://github.com/jeherve
- website: https://herve.bzh/