About Us

Headquartered in beautiful downtown Austin, Texas — the same state where WordPress was born.

We proudly host 0.0006% of the 50 million WordPress blogs on Earth, and more every day.

When you host with WP Engine, you’re betting on us, personally. So here’s who we are.

Were you looking for careers and culture? We got that too.

Jason Cohen

Co-Founder, CEO

Jason previously founded Smart Bear Software and co-founded ITWatchdogs, both of which were bootstrapped to profitability, grew to millions in revenue, and were sold.

Jason is a mentor at Capital Factory (like TechStars or Y-Combinator in Austin) and the co-host of OnStartups Answers along with Dharmesh Shah.

Jason writes and podcasts about startups and marketing on http://blog.asmartbear.com and can be found on Twitter as @asmartbear.

Mark Kelnar

The IT and PHP Guy

Mark has been developing software as a full time employee and as an independent consultant in Austin since 2000. He has done work for a collection of companies and projects, including work on the website for Hoover’s Inc and Dun and Bradstreet.

His role at WP Engine is to make sure the servers and your site are up and running as expected. If they are not, there’s a good chance that he is already working on resolving the issue.

Mark lives near Austin with his wife and two sons. You might spot him out at a WordPress Austin Meetup. To unplug from the network, he’ll escape to the mountains in Colorado for a few days of backcountry hiking and camping.

Mark will make occasional noise on Twitter at @renderandserve.

Chris Lauzon

Head of Customer Happiness

Chris is an expert in the field of ecommerce consulting and technical support, helping 1000s of clients and businesses since 2002. He has done work for several web hosting and ecommerce companies, as well as teaching different web technologies to the Austin Community.

Chris’s role in WP Engine is to be the “Head of Customer Happiness,” by communicating directly with the WP Engine community and providing support. Chris is extremely excited to be working with the members of the WordPress community and is looking forward to work closely with the WP Engine community.

Chris is very pro active in the austin tech community, and is a fitness enthusiast. He is currently training to partake in triathlons and the warrior dash. He is also a giant video game nerd. Chris can currently be followed on twitter at @squirex2.

Jason Cosper

WordPress Specialist

As WP Engine’s “other Jason”, Cosper is a WordPress specialist and support wunderkind. He’s been tirelessly debugging his xorg.conf file since installing Slackware in 1996 and has been working with WordPress since 2004.In his spare time, Cosper enjoys spending time with his wife and very tiny dog, sampling assorted beers, being NSFW on Twitter, eating burgers, and cursing more than a grown-ass man should.

Sean O’Shaughnessy

Senior SysAdmin

None of the apps Sean has administered have ever been hacked or exploited under his watch, despite serving a normal traffic load of hundreds of millions of pageviews each month. Sean brings over 5 years experience hosting WordPress applications for multinational brands like Sony, Disney, and eBay, where he architected, created, and managed their high-performance, redundant and secure clustering. Sean has also provided consulting for various brands on performance, security, caching and development/deployment workflows.

Sean lives and works in Winter Haven, Florida, where he is attempting to get better at wakeboarding (read: drinking on the boat). He is also an amateur photographer and videographer when he’s not spending time with his awesome wife and their friends. Find him tweeting sporadically @seanosh.

Trafton Esler

Lead Developer Champion

Despite a decade of computer engineering experience, from hardware (chip design at Intel and Robotics Fairs) to enterprise software (SAP), Trafton specializes in translating developer speak into plain English. He uses this superpower to solve technology problems with the WordPress developers that build amazing sites and host them on WP Engine.

Outside the office, Trafton is always organizing communities, including Burger Thursday, a 4 year quest to find the best burger in Austin, Texas. He is also an avid mountain biker, a certified Emergency First Responder and a Rescue Diver. He recently got into the Twitterverse, and you can follow him via @traftonesler.

Taylor West

Director of Stuff (and Marketing)

Taylor has been developing, designing, and consulting on WordPress since 2006.He is passionate about WordPress because it makes the web easily accessible to anyone with an idea, or the desire to create change.

As a 5-time entrepreneur, Taylor brings a fearless approach to marketing, as well as the wide variety of “stuff” he tackles – aiming to position WP Engine as the undisputed leader in WordPress hosting.

You’ll see Taylor around Austin with his wife, daughter, and their Rottweiler, Arthur. He has come over to the dark side and is tweeting and blogging about business, his time in the school-of-hard-knocks, and life in general @taylormetric.

Austin Gunter

Brand Ambassador

Austin lives and breathes life around words and people. He is a blogger, and genetically-inclined connector. As the brand ambassador for WP Engine, he handles social media, copywriting, blogging and WordPress community building around the company.

Previously, Austin grew a community of more than 120 tech startups at a small pre-seed accelerator in Austin, TX, worked as a F500 software consultant, and a freelance copywriter. He blogs at austingunter.com, practices tai chi, and tweets entirely too much…

Alan Comely

Alan Comley

The Other PHP Guy

Alan is closing in on five years in the professional programming racket. Starting as out as a game programmer, Alan worked on various platforms including PC, Xbox360, Playstation 3, and iOS. You can sample some of Alan’s work with Ashen Empires for PC and Underworlds for iOS platforms. After leaving the game industry, Alan worked on various mobile applications for the growing smartphone market. His sites are now set upon helping improve and grow WPEngine’s technology.

Away from the glow of a computer screen Alan can usually be on his couch asleep or around Austin’s music venues whenever a heavily distorted guitar can be heard. You’ll also catch him at the local karaoke bars and on the rare occasion even hosting the show.

Donovan Hernandez

Junior Developer

Donovan is a developer who is quickly trying to finish his degree in Chemical Engineering. After leaving Hewlett-Packard, he worked for a marketing company that specialized in WordPress design and development. He eventually wants to start contributing to the WordPress core, and start transitioning to back-end development as well. You can find him ranting on Twitter at @heydonovan.

Shayda Torabi

Office Manager and Event Coordinator

Shayda is a true Austin native and a recent PR graduate from Concordia University Austin who keeps the WP Engine offices organized, handles event and conference planning, and helps keep everyone running smoothly. Shayda is a master of juggling and loves that she gets to apply all of her skills to helping build the WP Engine community.

After starting her first blog when she was fifteen, she developed a true passion for all things WordPress. Since then, she’s been documenting her journeys in the live music capitol of the world. Outside of work you can find Shayda exploring Austin’s amazing live music events, and trolling for trailer food gems, while tweeting about the adventures she has.

Ben Metcalfe

Advisor

Ben can track his involvement with the WordPress community way back before it was even WordPress (B2 was the name of the former project that was forked and became WordPress). Ben helped build the BBC News Website, where he also rolled out the BBC’s blogging platform (sadly not WordPress) and its developer platform.

Since moving State-side, Ben has worked as a technologist and strategist – launching the MySpace Platform and advising numerous startups in his portfolio – including Seesmic, Apture (acquired by Google), News Basis and NutShell Mail (acquired by Constant Contact). Ben has blogged since 2004 on all manner of technology topics at http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/, which was previously one of the top 50 blogs in the UK.

Chrishaun Keller

Customer Happiness Specialist / ProDoc Goddess

Chrishaun (or if you’re in Austin, Sique…pronounced “cee-kay”) is obsessed with writing about technology and using technology to write and has been blogging with WordPress since 2005. This has fueled her to create support content and offer top level support for several large tech companies as well as teaching Composition and Technical Writing.

She is married with one grown and one semi-grown daughter and has been known to play video games, cook, make beer, juggle, and play D&D.

Alexander Shenkar

Servant of the servant of the servant

Alexander graduated from the University of Texas in Austin majoring in Philosophy. When he’s not contemplating on the concept of inconceivable simultaneous sameness and difference, he can be found at the local Hare Krishna temple helping with the preparations for the Sunday love feast. Alexander has been a staff photographer with the local newspaper, Daily Texan, and has travelled the world capturing images ranging from Yamuna river puja to the street art on the walls of Tel Aviv. He hopes to have his own show exhibit soon. Alexander has been in the tech industry ever since escaping high school. To him, technology is an exciting vehicle for propagating ideas that can reawaken our original consciousness.

Leandrew Dixon

WordPress Mechanic

Out of Virginia Tech, Leandrew Dixon is a relative newcomer to Austin. He got his start in WordPress building websites for his company’s products and has been in love with it ever since. Technophile, serial entrepreneur, and musician, he is practically immune to boredom. He integrated these passions and dove into the austin startup community with his 3 Day Startup Alumni company Novodo Music.

When not being the WordPress Mechanic or working on music or side projects, Leandrew can be found satisfying his thirst for knowledge with TED Talks, documentaries or any of the internets other fountains of knowledge.

Aaron Brazell

Advisor

Aaron Brazell is the author of the WordPress Bible (Wiley), and is most known for his blog,Technosailor.com. He has worked on a variety of entrepreneurial endeavors including several startups since 2005. He has been an active member of the WordPress community since 2004 as a core contributor, developer, user and consultant.

Aaron is a frequent public speaker, engaging with the WordPress community at WordCamps around the United States, as well as marketing, social media, and other industry events. He started and organized WordCamp Mid-Atlantic in 2009 and 2010, a WordPress community conference catering to the Baltimore/Washington region, including Maryland, D.C., Delaware and Northern Virginia.

He has worked a variety of companies including blog network b5media where he worked as the Director of Technology from 2006-2008.

Aaron currently resides in Austin, Texas, where he ensures his dog is well-fed, his bike still has wheels and his craft beer selections are tasty and cold. He maintains a photoblog at http://photos.aaronbrazell.com and helps keep the Twitter servers in check as @technosailor.

Eric Ries