Summary
Rian Van Der Merwe is a product leader with 21+ years designing and scaling B2C, B2B, and platform products, now leading Data Platform and Product Analytics at Cloudflare where his teams run one of the world’s highest-throughput ClickHouse deployments. He combines strategic context-setting with hands-on execution—writing code, building MCP servers, and shipping internal tooling—to close the gap between platform infrastructure and end-user product outcomes. Known for raising the bar on AI-assisted product work, he built an open-source AI workflow for PMs, runs internal training, and publishes practical guides on agentic workflows and integrations. Rian has repeatedly grown and integrated products through acquisitions (Jeli → PagerDuty, Wildbit → ActiveCampaign) and scaled Postmark from $1.7M to over $12M ARR, blending revenue accountability with product craft. Based in Portland, he pairs academic depth (advanced degrees in information science and internet marketing) with a rare mix of research-driven thinking and operational discipline.
10 years of coding experience
22 years of employment as a software developer
M.Sc (Eng), Information Science, M.Sc (Eng), Information Science at Stellenbosch University
Ph.D, Internet Marketing, Ph.D, Internet Marketing at Curtin University
English, Afrikaans