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Shanea Leven

Founder + CEO at CodeSee

Shanea Leven is the co-founder and CEO of CodeSee, a code visibility platform that helps developers and teams understand complex codebases.15 She founded CodeSee in 2019 with the mission of helping everyone master the understanding of code.25

Prior to founding CodeSee, Leven had a decade-long career as a product leader in developer tools at prominent tech companies. She held positions at Google, Docker, Cloudflare, and was a VP of Product at Lob, a developer-focused startup.4

Leven has a background in business and computer science.1 She is passionate about empowering development teams and creating tools that act as force multipliers of impact.4

In May 2024, CodeSee was acquired by GitKraken, a company specializing in developer tooling.2 As of February 2025, Leven describes herself as an AI Product Leader in addition to her role as Founder and CEO.3

Highlights

May 14 · linkedin

CodeSee has been acquired by GitKraken!

CodeSee will be integrated into the GitKraken Developer Experience platform.

We met the GitKraken team more than a year ago, and we were really impressed to know that, not only do they deeply care about developer experience, but they are also the masterminds behind the tools we all use everyday like GitLens.

GitKraken shares our vision

Our shared dedication to empowering developers with visualizations and AI ensures that CodeSee’s legacy of enhancing code understanding will continue to flourish. I’m beyond proud of what we’ve built and the team that’s gotten us this far. We are even more excited that CodeSee will be available to Gitkraken's 30 million developers.

Inspiration

Joshua Leven and I started CodeSee after a feature I was working on didn't launch due to a catastrophic bug. It’s a story we heard over and over from developers everywhere. It’s impossible to understand a company’s codebase let alone the impact of making important changes to that codebase. It’s absolutely terrifying to push a change, while under a deadline, and feel 100% confident that you aren’t going to bring the site down or cause a security vulnerability.

This is a pain point that is just universally accepted, and we as devs just resign ourselves to this standard. So we got to work, and out of this came something that we never could have imagined: a platform to help all kinds of developers from juniors, to leaders, to folks with disabilities, to folks trying to make the transition via open source. We’re so happy that this mission to help developers master understanding of their codebases will be brought to more people than ever inside of GitKraken’s platform.

Thank yous

I want to take a moment to express my sincerest gratitude to all of the present and past CodeSeers, to our customers, our open source community, our investors: boldstart ventures, Wellington Management, Uncork Capital, Precursor Ventures, M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund, GitHub, and so many many more. Your continued support and belief in CodeSee’s product and vision has been the ultimate gift.

To find out more, link in the comments.

Dec 29 · linkedin

The complete meltdown of software makes me very sad. It's time that I publish my thoughts on the why of CodeSee and how using it could have prevented hundreds of thousands of passengers from getting their flights delayed or cancelled during the holidays.

#refactoring #codevisibility #codesee #devtools #engineering

Related Questions

What inspired Shanea Leven to start CodeSee?
What are some of Shanea Leven's notable achievements before founding CodeSee?
How did CodeSee's acquisition by GitKraken impact its growth?
What challenges did Shanea Leven face while building CodeSee?
How does CodeSee's code visibility platform differ from its competitors?
Shanea Leven
Shanea Leven, photo 1
Shanea Leven, photo 2
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Location

San Francisco, California, United States