Jon Thornton in

Jon Thornton

Login to view DISC.
Director of Engineering at Squarespace
📍 New York, New York, United States

Jon Thornton is a Director of Engineering at Squarespace, leading the Application Platform group. With a BS from Boston University, his experience spans diverse sectors like health-tech and AI in education. He is a frequent speaker on engineering leadership and system design, and is known for his "brutal honesty and genuine competence. "

Outside of his leadership role, Jon enjoys the culture of New York City, attending rock concerts, using public transit, and visiting the citys beaches. He maintains his hands-on coding skills by contributing to a jQuery plugin in his free time, showing a sustained passion for development.

His diverse career has involved parking millions of cars, improving textbooks with AI, lowering prescription medication costs, and sending billions of emails.

Read the full overview →
Experience
21 Years
Current Role
Director of Engineering
Job Level
Mid-senior
Location
New York, New York, United States
Personality Overview

How Jon shows up

Communication Style
Decision Approach
Work Preference

Behavioral traits and communication patterns that shape how this person evaluates opportunities, builds trust, and makes decisions in professional settings.

Login to view personality overview.
Priorities

Topics Jon cares about

Managing Tech Debt
He frequently speaks at conferences and on podcasts about his framework for using technical debt as a strategic tool to deliver value faster.
AI in Platforms
He has recently discussed how agentic AI is actively reshaping platform engineering at Squarespace, with a new focus on developer experience over shared code.
+4 more topics Login to view topics
Career

Work history

6-2025
Director of Engineering
Squarespace
8-2022 - 6-2025
Principal Engineer
Squarespace
3-2017 - 8-2022
Director Of Engineering
Squarespace
6-2016 - 1-2017
Director Of Engineering
Blink Health
9-2014 - 6-2016
Head of Consumer Technology
Knewton
In the press

Media appearances

No media yetWe could not find public media appearances for this person.
Education
BS
Boston University
Social presence
in
Behavioral profile

DISC profile (public)

DISC behavioral profile

Dominance, influence, steadiness, and calculativeness scores with guidance on how this person prefers to communicate and decide.

Login to view DISC.

Other Squarespace Employees

Explore more public profiles from related professionals.

More profiles

Discover additional public profiles from our index.

Unlock the full playbookSee exactly how to sell to Jon. Free, 10 seconds.