Developer Relations (DevRel) is how technical companies earn trust, adoption, and advocacy from developers. It isn’t “community management with a nicer title.” It’s a set of roles that sit at the intersection of product, engineering, marketing, and user education. Below is a clear breakdown of the core roles, the order to hire them, and the patterns Stateshift has seen across 240+ developer-focused teams.
What DevRel Actually Does
Developer Relations helps developers succeed with your product. A good DevRel team reduces friction, improves onboarding, and builds a system that pulls people back into your ecosystem.
At its best, DevRel accelerates four things:
• Developer activation
• Product adoption
• Retention and expansion
• Community-driven growth
Companies that treat developer relations as “events and vibes” struggle. Companies that treat it as a strategic function tied to business outcomes win.
The Core DevRel Roles (and What They Really Do)
Director of Developer Relations
Think of this as the strategic operator. This person aligns developer relations with product, engineering, and GTM.
A strong Director focuses on:
• Developer onboarding and activation
• Clear community strategy
• Product feedback loops
• Cross-team alignment
• Measurable outcomes, not “activity”
You usually don’t hire this role first. It becomes essential once you have multiple DevRel functions and need someone to pull them into a single system.
Community Manager
This role supports the day-to-day heartbeat of your developer ecosystem. It’s often the first hire because community work creates the foundations everything else depends on.
A Community Manager handles:
• Moderating Slack, Discord, or Discourse
• Improving paths for new developers
• Running rituals (events, discussions, huddles)
• Creating content that removes friction
• Building relationships with early contributors
If you ignore this work, your onboarding degrades, your community stalls, and your team loses leverage.
Developer Advocate / Evangelist
This is your external communicator. They translate technical value into stories that developers can immediately understand.
Their work includes:
• Demos, talks, and workshops
• Blogs, videos, and tutorials
• Meeting developers in the places they already gather
• Bringing clear product feedback back inside the company
• Guiding developers toward their first “aha moment”
This role becomes valuable once you have a stable community experience and need attention, reach, and awareness.
DevRel Engineer
This isn’t always discussed, but it matters. A DevRel Engineer is the closest link between your product and your users.
They typically:
• Build demo apps
• Write sample code
• Diagnose onboarding issues
• Translate developer feedback into product improvements
• Support complex integrations and advanced users
This role fits companies with technical audiences that expect hands-on guidance rather than marketing.
Stateshift’s work with API- and platform-heavy companies shows DevRel Engineers become essential when developers require clarity, working examples, and deeper hands-on guidance.
Who to Hire First
If you’re building from zero, the order below tends to produce the strongest results.
- Community Manager
Build the foundation: onboarding, discussions, events, and the systems that keep people engaged. - Developer Advocate / Evangelist
Drive awareness and pull developers into a stable ecosystem instead of pointing them toward a black hole. - Director of DevRel
Bring strategy, coordination, and cross-functional alignment once your program and audience have scale.
Teams that reverse this order often run into a pattern: the strategy is clear, but execution is missing.
What DevRel Salaries Look Like
Salary data varies by region and company stage. As of the latest public ranges on Glassdoor and Levels. FYI [Verified]:
• Community Manager: ~85K–130K
• Developer Advocate: ~120K–180K
• Director of DevRel: ~160K–240K+
• DevRel Engineer: ~140K–200K
For early-stage startups, compensation often leans toward equity with lower base salaries.
What Makes DevRel Successful
You can hire smart people and still struggle if the system is unclear. The best programs share four traits.
1. Community-first mindset
Developers adopt tools that listen to them. They ignore tools that don’t.
2. Clear value delivery
Developer relations is not promotion. It’s education, friction removal, and shared momentum.
3. Authenticity
Developers can smell corporate messaging from a mile away. Real experience beats polished scripts.
4. Collaboration with product and engineering
If DevRel operates as a silo, nothing compounds.
How DevRel Creates Value
DevRel is most effective when it focuses on four fundamentals:
Community-first
Your developers aren’t just users. They’re partners in shaping the product.
Clear value delivery
Documentation, tutorials, demos, and onboarding improvements usually outperform webinars and events.
Authenticity
Developers respect honesty, clarity, and expertise. They avoid corporate language.
Integration with product and engineering
It becomes strategic when product decisions are influenced by developer insights.
The DevRel Operating System
Most companies think developer relations is about people. In reality, it’s about systems.
Here’s what Stateshift sees across high-performing DevRel programs:
1. Developer Onboarding Is the First Leverage Point
Every successful DevRel program starts with this question:
“How quickly can a new developer reach their first meaningful win?”
Stateshift’s audits across developer tools, APIs, and SaaS platforms reveal consistent friction points:
• unclear docs
• missing examples
• confusing authentication
• no real “first project” path
• scattered content across docs, blog, and GitHub
Improving onboarding is the fastest way to improve activation and retention.
2. Community Rituals Drive Engagement
A community without rituals is just a quiet Slack.
Rituals create belonging. Examples:
• weekly huddles
• deep dives
• office hours
• expert sessions
• contributor updates
• meetups
These aren’t just events. They set expectations for how the community works.
3. Content Is a Pull, Not a Push
The best content doesn’t promote the product. It removes friction.
Examples:
• “How to build X using our API”
• “5 mistakes devs make integrating Y (and how to avoid them)”
• “A full working demo for Z use case”
Content works when developers save time by reading it.
4. Feedback Loops Make or Break Developer Trust
Teams often underestimate how emotional developer trust is.
If a developer reports a bug or friction and nothing happens, they don’t complain.
They leave.
Strong DevRel programs:
• route feedback into product
• close the loop visibly
• publish improvements
• credit contributors
Trust compounds. Silence erodes.
How to Measure DevRel
DevRel becomes a real function when it is tied to measurable outcomes.
The most reliable metrics include:
• Documentation clarity
• Time to first successful API call
• Developer activation
• Returning active developers
• Contributor output
• Community health indicators
• Ecosystem growth (integrations, tutorials, extensions)
Stateshift encourages teams to separate vanity metrics (impressions) from foundational metrics (activation and adoption).
Stateshift’s Guidance on Building Your DevRel Program
After partnering with more than 240 developer-focused companies, a clear pattern emerges:
DevRel succeeds when:
• onboarding is clean
• the community has structure
• content reduces friction
• engineering and DevRel collaborate
• feedback loops are visible
• metrics tie to business outcomes
DevRel struggles when:
• advocacy happens before community
• the role is treated as marketing
• leadership wants activity instead of systems
• there is no owner for onboarding
• metrics are vague or ornamental
It isn’t a side project. It’s a strategic engine for adoption, retention, and ecosystem growth.
Want a deeper breakdown of DevRel roles?
If you want a more detailed walkthrough of how these roles work in practice, I break it down clearly in this short video. I walk through the most common DevRel roles, when to hire them, and how they fit together inside a technical company.
You can watch it here:
I have spent more than 26 years helping developer-focused companies build movements, ecosystems, and high-performing teams. The video is a helpful companion to everything covered above.
