New Relic’s Instant Observability (IO) platform served two purposes: as a product feature allowing users to quickly deploy monitoring for open-source technologies, and as a public-facing marketing asset attracting approximately 100,000 monthly visitors. It converted at only 15%.
I managed two teams: an India-based team creating IO integrations and a US-based Developer Enablement team that had built the platform. The core problem was architectural: Engineering had built IO on a static site generator (Gatsby), optimized for their own workflow but preventing Marketing from running A/B tests, optimizing content, or experimenting with messaging. A valuable top-of-funnel asset was locked behind an engineering bottleneck.
Architecture Redesign: Led the Developer Enablement team to re-architect the IO workflow. Instead of generating static pages, the system would output content to Marketing’s CMS (Drupal), enabling dynamic content management while Engineering continued shipping integrations through an API
Cross-Functional Partnership: Built a working relationship between Engineering and Marketing Engineering — two teams that had never shared ownership of a product. Created shared KPIs around both content velocity and conversion metrics, giving both teams skin in the same outcome
Optimization Enablement: Once on Drupal, worked with Marketing to implement systematic A/B testing on layout, CTAs, and content presentation — establishing a conversion optimization practice that hadn’t previously existed
Key Insight: Technical decisions have marketing consequences. A static site generator was the right engineering choice for a developer-focused team, but it created an invisible ceiling on growth. The biggest unlock wasn’t the migration itself — it was creating shared ownership between two teams that had never had reason to collaborate. Once Engineering and Marketing were pulling toward the same metrics, optimization became self-sustaining.