I strive to build things that compound. New platforms taking shape, architecture that opens markets, teams that punch above their weight — making the technical bet make sense to the business. I started when the iPhone was new and built a career on what came next. AI is poised to change how we build software more than anything since. It's big, it's undefined, and it's going to be messy, but turning chaos into clarity is where I do my best work.
Experience
2025
StarLifter
CEO
- AI-native BI platform from the founder of ServiceNow. Brought in as CEO after a full GTM reset. Shaped the product positioning, ran customer discovery, and packaged raw technology into a go-to-market story.
2023 - 2025
Contentsquare
Engineering Director
Global Mobile
- Hands-on in the Heap acquisition — due diligence, IP defense, merger agreement review. Led the combined global mobile org post-merger. 6 teams, 45 engineers and managers.
- Reduced ~$6M in churn risk in year one. Worked at-risk accounts directly alongside sales and support to rebuild customer trust post-merger.
- Unified mobile SDK architecture across both product lines. Release quality gates and regression prevention.
2020 - 2023
Heap
Director of Engineering
Data Capture · Mobile · SDKs
- Capture infrastructure at scale: ~2B events/day when joined, ~6B when left. Heap.js running on millions of websites. Owned all SDK products — web, iOS, Android, and connected surfaces.
- Led full mobile SDK rebuild: $2M+ new ARR in year one, fastest-growing revenue segment. Pioneered novel capture mechanisms on iOS. Designed the cross-platform architecture, modularity across iOS and Android that opened up emerging platforms: TVs, in-car systems, point-of-sale.
- Mobile point of contact on the largest accounts — expansion deals, customer webinars, executive-level conversations.
- Invested in customer-facing teams — Support, Success, implementation — and turned mobile from a weakness into a strength.
2014 - 2019
ServiceNow
Director of Engineering
Mobile · Platform UI
- Founded ServiceNow’s mobile engineering organization. Product vision, team, architecture. Built Cabrillo, a native/JS bridge that let web-customized apps render with native mobile UI without rewriting. Still in production a decade later.
- Expanded to lead all next-gen UI: Service Portal, Connect, platform modernization. 5 teams, ~45 engineers.
- On stage at Knowledge keynotes and Now Forum annually alongside ServiceNow’s founder and CEO. Helped close the first $1M platform deal through direct customer engagement.
2012 - 2015
Spaceman Labs
Co-Founder
- Co-founded a two-person mobile product studio. Client work to self-fund, original products to ship. Presented at LAUNCH Festival.
- Early iOS community voice — open source (SMPageControl), ~30 posts on iOS internals. Community presence that drove real inbound interest.
2008 - 2012
Mellmo / Roambi
Manager, iOS Development
- Built the core iOS visualizations: SuperList, Elements, Layers. Data visualization and BI for the iPhone — novel interaction design and data display on an emergent platform and underpowered hardware.
- Shipped on iPad launch day at Apple’s request. App pre-installed on Apple Store iPads. iPad App of the Year.
- Featured in Forbes — professional jetski sponsorship that became the company’s best recruiting lever. Customer advisory boards, candidate closes, company ambassador. Leadership beyond the codebase.
2007 - Present
Seventy-Nine Lines
Top Tinkerer
- iOS apps since 2007. Jailbroken iPhones, before the SDK or App Store existed. In the App Store month one.
- PegJump hit #3 Top Free, millions of downloads, still live. Dashbuster started pre-SDK on jailbroken iPhones, shipped on the App Store in month one — one architecture supporting both Blockbuster and Netflix.
2020 - Present
City of La Mesa Planning Commission
Commissioner
- Elected chair in 2024. Quasi-judicial land use hearings, high-stakes public decision-making. Leadership outside of technology.
Patents
Three patents · full details, links, and more at jerryis.me/resume
Who am I? #
I’m Jerry! I’ve been building software, and teams that build software, for right about 20 years. I’ve historically identified as a mobile guy…. but that’s probably a massively narrow view on my career.
Probably most interesting to PostHog, I was Director of Engineering at Heap. I led the Capture and Ecosystem org - Collectors, Heap.js, SDKs, and a bunch of other related (sometime) things. I hadn’t intended on spending years in the product analytics space — but I sure did.
At Heap, the pitch was “Look, autocapture - you don’t need an engineer!” Except, that was always a bit of a broken promise when it came to mobile. It’s really hard to get a company to change the way it talks about itself, especially when the whole premise is based roughly around ✨magic✨. Engineers matter a lot, and they are a fantastic group to work with if you know how to talk to them. I didn’t arrive at PostHog’s worldview by reading your handbook, but rather, beating the same drum, from a different company.
I’ve been watching PostHog for a while now, and I’ve always been impressed by the speed that you guys ship. Frankly, the acquision by Contentsquare hurt Heap’s pace, and seems (at least from where I sit now) to have had a pretty negative impact on Heap’s place in US markets. I’m hopeful that was a net positive for PostHog. 😉
There’s a whole bunch of meaty details over in the resume tab, and also, I love telling a good story, so think of which ones you want to hear more about in an interview!
Why this role #
The honest truth is, I’m a bit of an odd duck: An engineer who loves to build, manage people, and really loves talking to customers. Most people say “oh my gosh, great skillset”, but have approximatly zero roles where the hiring process rewards that sort of diversity.
I’m pretty pumped that, perhaps, this one might: https://posthog.com/careers/technical-ex-founder
I’ve worked at pre-product startups, giant enterprise software co’s, and everything in between. I’ve brought a scrappy, Get Shit Done attitude to everyone of them, which mostly means focusing on where I can have the most impact or unstick the stickiest problems, and a lot less about titles and org size.
What I bring #
I know the space. I was responsible for the capture infrastructure and all our SDKs. I rebooted the entire mobile SDK architecture — modular cores, bridges, overlays — to solve the cross-platform consistency problem. I understand autocapture economics, cross-platform data challenges, and where the PM-first analytics approach starts to fray.
I love making things compound. At Heap, it was clear that we couldn’t get away with only supporting iPhones and Android, but there weren’t resources (nor the apetite) for a risky rewrite - so we did it real scrappy like. We built just enough of a foundation to improve the product immediately, and still grow into our much bigger vision. It worked.
Ship it! Being an engineering leader is weird - because some people think you aren’t supposed to code anymore. I’ve always been a builder, and nothing makes a team gel faster than feeling like everyone is in it together. Right now, I’m knee deep in building with AI. Not in the grandiose influencer way - but really pushing on modern tooling, tight feedback loops, and asking myself ‘just how fast can we go!?’. I genuinely haven’t been this excited about building since the iPhone was released.
A big mouth. I’ve never worked anywhere where I wasn’t out presenting, pitching, and talking to customers. I can’t help myself. I did a few customer webinars at Heap, training field teams, and translating technical strategy and vision understand, and buy into. At ServiceNow, I was on stage at Knowledge keynotes alongside the founder and CEO.
Start here #
- Rebooting Heap’s Mobile SDKs — the architecture behind the capture platform
- Modern Analytics for Mobile Teams — me presenting the mobile analytics case to Heap customers
- Advanced Mobile Analytics — cross-platform journeys, session replay, and breaking down data silos
- Dabble or Die — Years of weird projects and learnings. Twitter posts to Blog posts.
If any of this sounds interesting, let’s talk.