# John Rae-Grant > AI DevTools Leader - CopilotKit, Datastax, Google, and Microsoft Location: Los Gatos, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/johnraegrant With over 20 years of experience in building and leading software organizations, I am passionate about designing and delivering great products that delight developers and users. In addition to my technical and leadership skills, I am also an AI enthusiast and student, with a keen interest in combatting disinformation and building trust into the Internet and all software layers. Previously, I was the Vice President of Product Management and Developer Relations at DataStax, where I led the company's evolution towards cloud-native data management solutions based on Apache Cassandra. I built and managed a 29-person organization that included Developer Relations, Developer Content, Developer Communities, Docs, and a team of go-to-developer Product Managers. We took a data-driven approach to create a strong developer engine and organization, attracting and nurturing thousands of new developers to DataStax Astra DB each week, and launching influential and partner programs that increased adoption and engagement. I also have extensive experience in working on Developer Platforms at Google and Microsoft, where I pushed for usability and approachability from Product Management, and built two-way advocacy from Developer Relations. I love building platforms that empower geeks, and shaping the teams that help them to learn about and use the platform. I have a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Yale University, and I speak fluent French and Spanish. I am also an avid traveler, and I was lucky to be able to take six months off to travel with my family before Covid-19. ## Work Experience ### Head of Product @ CopilotKit🪁 (AG-UI) Jan 2025 – Present | Silicon Valley, CA, USA CopilotKit is the Open Source Agentic Application Developer Framework: The easiest way to add AI copilots - intelligent, context-aware assistants - into your app. As Head of Product, I lead our Product Strategy and Roadmap, including Developer and Customer Experience. ### Vice President, Product Management and Developer Relations @ DataStax Jan 2020 – Jan 2023 | Santa Clara, California, United States I joined DataStax in the summer of 2020 to lead the company's evolution towards delighting developers with our cloud products. I built and led a 29 person organization including Developer Relations, Developer Content, Developer Communities, Docs, and a team of go-to-developer Product Managers. We took a data-driven approach to build a strong developer engine and organization, including: * Adjunct open source projects to enable developers to adopt Apache Cassandra * A PLG and developer nurture engine to attract and guide Astra developers to success * Workshops that bring multiple hundreds of new developers to DataStax Astra DB each week * Influencer and partner programs which bring new developer audiences to Astra * A strong developer content engine pumping out and promoting developer oriented content * Language idiomatic SDKs., samples, and libraries for specific developer languages Starting in early 2022, I focused on improving the Developer Experience of DataStax Astra (DBaaS) and the Developer Surface around the product (SDKs, Language libraries, Plug-ins, Integrations, Sample apps, APIs). I led a team of Product Managers through the wholesale terraforming of the Astra UX, strong evolution of the developer APIs, beefing up DataStax' dedication to the Apache Cassandra™ community, and the creation of over 40 integrations with leading tools. Astra DB is now on a dramatic growth path, and is leading DataStax revenue and account growth, augmenting and supplanting DataStax Enterprise. ### World Traveller @ Unknown Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 I was lucky to be able to take six months off to travel with my family, and very lucky to have done this before Covid-19. See rae-grant.com for the travelogue. ### Lead Product Manager - Cloud DevOps Connect @ Google Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 | Sunnyvale, CA Google’s Cloud business was growing rapidly, but running third in a market led by Amazon and Microsoft. As Lead PM for the Connect Pillar of Developer Products Group, I led the team (5 PMs, ~120 engineers) building a unifying workbench and data layer to cohere Google’s internal and external DevOps tools. In early 2019, most of Connect was moved into Core Systems. I created the initial roadmap for what has become Workflow - the unifying “spine” of developer tools within Google. ### Lead Product Manager - Google Play services @ Google Jan 2016 – Jan 2018 | Mountain View, CA As Lead PM for Google Play services, I worked with teams from 11 different Product Areas across Google (70 product teams, approximately 150 engineers) to deliver Google's proprietary layer on top of Android to more than 2billion Android devices all over the world. Google Play services contains the critical runtime for the Google APIs for Android (including the Auth API, Places API, and Google Sign-In) and shared features for users (including Google Settings, Android Auto, and Location services). ### Lead Product Manager - Gmail @ Google Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | Mountain View, CA As Lead PM for Gmail, I worked with my team of 5PMs and the ~300 engineers and designers working on Gmail to make a great product even better while growing the user base from 350m to over 1B 30 day active users, while working hand-in-hand with the Inbox team to make the entire product suite future ready. My personal areas of focus were security, privacy, spam, abuse and developer APIs. Signature accomplishments of my team included getting Inbox for Work to general availability, starting Gmail add-ons, Gmail Android passing 600M 30DA with major OEMs announcing Gmail as the only pre-installed email client, kicking off the new Inbox-based Gmail for iOS, releasing the ARC draft spec in conjunction with Yahoo, Microsoft, Paypal, LinkedIn and Comcast, and launching Gmailify - a key portability feature enabling use of Gmail client and service with legacy email addresses (including Yahoo and AOL). ### Sr. Product Manager - Gmail backend @ Google Jan 2013 – Jan 2015 | Mountain View, CA I covered a wide variety of largely "back-end" projects and issues including Gmail Security, Privacy, Spam, Abuse and APIs. I work with industry partners and standards bodies to strengthen encryption and authentication across the email ecology. I'm also working to enable developers to extend Gmail and Inbox in creative, powerful, and mostly useful ways. ### Founder @ The Art of Work Jan 1997 – Jan 2013 | Los Gatos, California, United States The Art of Work specializes in executive teamwork for tech leaders, and the output of that teamwork: strategically aligned organizations. As the principal of this consultancy, I've acted as an executive coach, strategic advisor, business plan reviewer, leadership trainer, and internal consultant to several different organizations, from raw start-up to Fortune 100 companies. ### Founder / CEO @ Glooey, Inc. Jan 2011 – Jan 2013 | Silicon Valley, CA Glooey made real world branding come to life through augmented reality. ### Co-Founder @ Zazengo Jan 2006 – Jan 2010 | Santa Cruz, CA Zazengo was the sustainability engagement toolkit for corporations and large not for profits. Our clients used Zazengo to promote, track and measure individual employee and consumer action aligned with sustainability goals. ### Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder @ The NRG Group Jan 1999 – Jan 2001 NRG was the first and only technology incubator in Canada to go through an IPO. As CTO and co-founder, I was the primary evaluator of new businesses and entrepreneurial teams, and designed and oversaw the incubation process. NRG began as a pure consultancy, self-funded our first 5 startup investments, and grew to encompass 180 people across seven companies and our consulting practice. ### Business Unit Manager - Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) @ Microsoft Jan 1994 – Jan 1996 As Business Unit Manger for the Microsoft Developer Network, I led a 110 person organization through the transformation of MSDN from an afterthought to the central umbrella brand for all developer outreach. We became the primary mechanism for transmitting the "Microsoft gets the Internet" message of Dec 7, 1995 out to the software development community. We doubled revenues to over $100M, and cut COGS by 75%. ### Lead Program Manager / QA Manager - Visual C++ @ Microsoft Jan 1990 – Jan 1994 I was part of a new management team brought in by Mike Maples to turn around Microsoft's ailing C++ business after a disastrous few years being decimated by Borland. Having lost 35% market share in two years, we had to change everything. We transformed the business from shipping one bad, buggy, late product every 2 years to shipping once a quarter, on time, to rave reviews, with decreased headcount. ### Development Manager - Applications Tools @ Microsoft Jan 1986 – Jan 1990 The Applications Tools group supplied critical components and development tools throughout the company. My work included early design work on Microsoft's "getting" of objects, advanced research into swap tuning and memory optimization, cross-compilation systems for multiple hardware platforms, and shared code libraries including the setup toolkit shipped with all Microsoft applications. ### Software Design Engineer @ Iris Healthcare Systems Jan 1984 – Jan 1985 In my first job programming, I developed core internal systems for the Ax healthcare reporting system, including an entire rework of the menu description language and interpreter (core UI linking all reports), as well as the btree system used to manage storage for all records. ## Education ### Professional Cerficate in AI/ML University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business ### Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in Computer Science Yale University ### High School in French, Spanish, Computer Science, Art Upper Canada College ### Bachelor of Science - BS in Computer Science Yale University ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/johnraegrant - Website: https://www.johnraegrant.com/ - Website: https://theartofwork.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/johnraegrant JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/johnraegrant/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-05