Title inflation, conflation, and regional variation make the DevRel job market harder to navigate than most. This file maps the field's titles to functions, seniority levels, and reporting expectations as observed circa 2024–2026.
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Title inflation, conflation, and regional variation make the DevRel job market harder to navigate than most. This file maps the field’s titles to functions, seniority levels, and reporting expectations as observed circa 2024–2026.
Individual contributor titles
The advocacy / evangelism family
Title
What it typically means
Developer Advocate
The modern standard label. A practising engineer doing public-facing technical communication and inbound listening.
Developer Evangelist
More outbound, often marketing-aligned. Still common at API companies (Twilio’s lineage), and at companies whose DevRel sits under marketing.
Developer Relations Engineer / DevRel Engineer
Same work as advocate, but the company wants to signal engineering credibility. Often reports up through engineering rather than marketing.
Technical Evangelist
Older variant, sometimes used by hardware companies (Intel, NVIDIA).
Cloud Advocate
Microsoft-coined (~2017). The Cloud Advocates team.
AI Advocate / GenAI Advocate
Emerged 2023–2024 as AI companies and AI-adjacent products built dedicated teams.
Open Source Advocate / Open Source Engineer
Focuses on community contributions, upstream relationships, and OSS ecosystem health.
Tutorials, courses, video, sample apps. Often distinct from documentation.
Technical Curriculum Developer
Courses and certifications.
Technical Writer
Reference, conceptual, and tutorial docs. The standardised craft is documented at writethedocs.org.
Documentation Engineer
Treats docs as code; builds the docs platform itself.
Developer Content Creator
Loose title for video/YouTube-focused educators.
The community family
Title
What it typically means
Community Manager
Operates the spaces (Discord/Slack/forum).
Community Engineer
Technical community manager; can debug and write code.
Community Strategist
Designs the program. Often more senior.
Developer Community Manager
Same as community manager, narrowed to dev audiences.
Community Program Manager
Runs the ambassador/MVP/champion program.
The success family
Title
What it typically means
Developer Success Engineer
Helps customer developers ship with the product. Hybrid of support and solutions engineering.
Developer Solutions Engineer
Pre-sales technical role for developer products.
Solutions Architect
More enterprise, sometimes overlaps with DevRel at infra companies.
Customer Engineer
Google Cloud’s term for the same role.
The marketing family
Title
What it typically means
Developer Marketing Manager
Owns developer-targeted campaigns and content distribution.
Product Marketing Manager, Developer
More launch-focused.
Developer Growth Manager
PLG-flavoured developer marketer.
Specialist roles
Title
What it typically means
Developer Experience Engineer / DevEx Engineer
Improves the experience of using the product (often internal, sometimes external).
Developer Relations Strategist
Senior IC who designs programs without managing people.
Open Source Program Manager (OSPM)
Runs the company’s open source office; cross-team policy and contribution work.
Tech Community Specialist
Catch-all in regions where “developer” is not the local idiomatic term.
Leadership titles
Title
Scope
Manager, Developer Relations
First-line management of 3–7 ICs.
Senior Manager / Director of DevRel
Multi-team management, 7–25 people.
Head of Developer Relations
Senior leader role, sometimes used at startups in lieu of Director or VP.
VP, Developer Relations
Org-level leadership, 25+ people, owns goals across multiple sub-functions.
VP / Head of Developer Experience
Owns DX as a category, often combining DevRel with platform engineering, internal tools, or both. Sarah Drasner at Google is an example.
Chief Developer Relations Officer (CDRO)
Rare, used by some startups to signal that the function is C-suite-strategic.
Chief Developer Officer / CDO
Even rarer; sometimes encompasses DevRel, DX, and developer product strategy.
Common adjacent titles that are not DevRel
These look like DevRel but are not, and conflating them muddies team design:
Developer (Software Engineer) — Just builds software.
Sales Engineer / Pre-Sales Engineer — Customer-facing technical role within Sales; goal is deal close, not community.
Customer Success Manager — Account-management role; not technical by default.
Technical Account Manager — Senior post-sales relationship role at enterprise accounts.
Technical Marketing Manager — Sibling of developer marketing but often consumer- or enterprise-buyer-targeted.
Some companies blur these lines deliberately — at smaller orgs a Developer Advocate might pinch-hit on pre-sales calls, and a Solutions Engineer might give conference talks. The titles are descriptive, not prescriptive.
Seniority mapping (IC track)
A rough ladder used by mid-to-large companies, here illustrated with the Developer Advocate role:
Level
Title
Years exp.
Scope
L3 / IC2
Associate Developer Advocate
0–2
Executes assigned content, supported by senior peers.
L4 / IC3
Developer Advocate
2–5
Owns a content stream and a community segment.
L5 / IC4
Senior Developer Advocate
5–8
Drives multi-quarter projects; mentors.
L6 / IC5
Staff Developer Advocate
8–12
Owns a domain or region; sets strategy with their lead.
L7 / IC6
Principal Developer Advocate
12+
Industry-recognised voice; influences company strategy.
L8 / IC7
Distinguished Developer Advocate / Fellow
15+
Rare. Effectively a public figure in their domain (Kelsey Hightower is the canonical example).
Seniority mapping (management track)
Level
Title
Scope
M1
Manager
3–7 reports, one team.
M2
Senior Manager
1–3 teams, 8–20 people.
M3
Director
Sub-org, 20–60 people.
M4
Senior Director / VP
Full org, 60+ people, cross-functional partner to product/marketing/engineering VPs.
M5
SVP / EVP / C-level
Rare; only at companies where DevRel is structurally central (e.g. Stripe, Twilio, GitHub, HashiCorp, OpenAI).
Compensation observations (US, 2024–2026)
Compensation is comparable to software engineering at the same level in the same company, with two caveats:
At marketing-reporting DevRel teams, comp often tracks marketing comp, which can be 10–20% below engineering at IC4+.
At engineering-reporting DevRel teams, comp tracks engineering and includes equivalent stock grants.
Approximate ranges (US, total compensation, 2024–2026):
Level
Range (USD)
Developer Advocate
$130k–$200k
Senior Developer Advocate
$190k–$280k
Staff Developer Advocate
$260k–$400k
Principal Developer Advocate
$350k–$550k
Manager / Senior Manager
$250k–$400k
Director
$350k–$550k
VP
$450k–$900k+
Compensation at major cloud, AI, and infra companies (Google, AWS, Microsoft, Stripe, OpenAI, Anthropic) skews substantially higher; at early-stage startups it is usually lower in cash and higher in equity.
See also
./disciplines.md for the underlying functions these titles map to.