Derek Springer
Staff Engineer at Automattic
San Marcos, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolDerek Springer is a Staff Engineer with 14 years of experience building large-scale safety and infrastructure systems, currently architecting AI-powered spam and abuse detection that protects over 100 million websites. At Automattic he leads real-time ML classification, fraud scoring, anomaly detection, and the official Akismet SDK effort that brings enterprise-grade spam protection to the broader web. His background includes scaling publisher monetization (WordAds), core WordPress.com platform engineering, and cross-platform safety integrations across WordPress.com, Jetpack, WooCommerce, and Tumblr. He combines systems and AI engineering with practical tooling—designing multi-agent review systems and Claude Code automations that pull from GitHub, Slack, and Linear to multiply team output. A UCLA MS and longtime open-source contributor (notably Jetpack/WordAds), he pairs mission-driven infrastructure work with an unexpected hobbyist streak as an advanced homebrewer in Southern California.
14 years of coding experience
10 years of employment as a software developer
Torrey Pines High SchoolUniversity of California, Los AngelesBS Computer Science, BS Computer Science at Loyola Marymount University
English, Spanish
Stackoverflow
1reputation
0reached
0answers
0questions
Github Skills (11)
wordpress10
php10
javascript10
react10
plugin10
front-end-development9
back-end-development9
html9
api8
css8
apidoc8
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
Automattic/jetpack
Dec 2016 - Sep 2020
Security, performance, marketing, and design tools — Jetpack is made by WordPress experts to make WP sites safer and faster, and help you grow your traffic.
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:3 reviews, 41 commits, 32 PRs in 3 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Derek primarily contributed to the WordAds module, a Jetpack feature for displaying ads. Their work involved adding, refactoring, and updating WordAds components, including settings cards and ad placement logic. The user also made changes to the WordPress.com front-end by adding/modifying ad settings. Several commits involved copy updates and integrating custom ads.txt entries.
reactexpertswordpressphpsecurity
Automattic/RadControl
Jun 2013 - Feb 2021
Harness the power of WordPress.com's advertising partners for your own blog.
Contributions:1 release, 180 commits, 20 pushes in 7 years 9 months
wordpresspoweradvertisingwordpress-pluginharness
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