# Rob Mee

> Rob Mee is the San Francisco-based co-founder and CEO of Mechanical Orchard, which develops the Imogen platform for modernizing legacy mainframe applications. He founded Pivotal Labs in 1989, helped establish Pivotal Software in 2013, and served as its CEO from 2015 through its 2019 acquisition by VMware. His work connects Extreme Programming, collaborative development, cloud platforms, and verification of AI-generated software.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at Mechanical Orchard
- **Organizations:** Mechanical Orchard, Pivotal Labs, Pivotal Software, Geometer, Evant
- **Education:** University of California, Berkeley
- **Known for:** Built Pivotal Labs around collaborative software development and agile engineering practices., Served as Pivotal Software CEO from 2015 through its 2019 acquisition., Led Pivotal through its 2018 NYSE listing.

## Career timeline

- **Early career** — Wrote natural language translation systems in Lisp at an AI laboratory in Tokyo.
- **1989** — Founded Pivotal Labs.
- **2000-2001** — Served as Director of Engineering and XP Coach at Evant.
- **2002** — Co-taught an Extreme Programming simulation with Joshua Kerievsky at OOPSLA.
- **2012** — Pivotal Labs was acquired by EMC.
- **2013** — Helped establish Pivotal Software, combining Pivotal Labs with cloud and data assets.
- **2015** — Appointed CEO of Pivotal Software in August.
- **2018** — Led Pivotal Software through its April public listing on the NYSE.
- **2019** — VMware completed its acquisition of Pivotal in December.
- **2021** — Appeared at Code BEAM as founder of incubator Geometer.
- **2022** — Co-founded Mechanical Orchard, established in October.
- **2025** — Mechanical Orchard launched Imogen and announced Thoughtworks as its first partner in April.

## Achievements

- Built Pivotal Labs around collaborative software development and agile engineering practices.
- Served as Pivotal Software CEO from 2015 through its 2019 acquisition.
- Led Pivotal through its 2018 NYSE listing.
- Co-founded Mechanical Orchard and launched its Imogen modernization platform.
- Mechanical Orchard secured a $50 million Series B led by GV in 2024.

## Latest updates

- **2026-09** — Mechanical Orchard announced ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification after an independent audit by Schellman.
- **2026-07** — Mechanical Orchard announced Imogen integration with AWS Transform, an autonomous build and verification pipeline, and a Leidos partnership.
- **2026-01** — Mee discussed Imogen, enterprise inertia, and ambitions beyond mainframes in a published interview.

## Links

- Website: https://www.mechanical-orchard.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robmee

---

Profile page: https://yespress.io/rob-mee
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-24