This chapter gives founders and DevRel managers a practical sequence for building a function, including the first hires, minimum infrastructure, and measures for each stage.
Step 0: Decide whether you actually need DevRel
Before any hiring, confirm:
- Are developers your decision-makers, integrators, or amplifiers? If not, you may not need DevRel as a function: technical marketing and customer engineering may suffice.
- Do you have a product that developers actually want to use? No DevRel program compensates for a product that fails for its target audience.
- Are you willing to invest beyond one hire? Lone-evangelist programs fail. Plan for at least 2 to 3 people within 18 months.
Proceed only if all three conditions hold. Otherwise resolve the product, audience, or investment question before hiring.
Step 1: Articulate the strategy (before hiring)
Write a one-page document covering:
- What goals from AAARRRP does DevRel serve at this company stage? Most likely a subset: often Awareness, Acquisition, Activation, and Product for early-stage; Retention and Referral added later.
- Who is the target developer? Specific persona: stack, seniority, employer type, geography.
- What is the success metric? Pick one to two for the first six months.
- Where does DevRel report? Decide deliberately.
If you cannot answer these, you are not ready to hire.
Step 2: First hire: a Community Manager (or generalist with community lean)
The first DevRel hire should usually be a Community Manager or community-focused generalist.
Why:
- Advocacy needs a maintained channel where interested developers can ask questions and continue participating.
- Communities take months to establish, so starting early allows time to recruit members and develop operating norms.
- A high-profile advocate is a risky first hire when support, documentation, and community operations are not yet in place.
What to hire for:
- Community-management or technical-community experience.
- Some technical credibility (can use the product, hold technical conversations).
- Communication-craft excellence.
- Empathy and operational discipline.
Within the first three months, this person should:
- Build the community infrastructure (Discord / Slack / Discourse, depending on context).
- Operate consistent presence (welcome new members, answer questions, run office hours).
- Identify the first 20 to 50 highly engaged community members and develop relationships with each.
- Document common questions and friction points.
Step 3: Second hire: a Developer Advocate / Evangelist
Once community operations exist, the Advocate produces public content, demos, and talks.
What to hire for:
- Demonstrated public portfolio (blog, talks, video).
- Engineering background; can credibly use the product.
- Communication craft; writing-and-speaking competence.
- Cultural alignment with the target developer audience.
Within the first three months, this person should:
- Audit existing docs, samples, content; identify gaps.
- Publish substantial first-flag content (e.g. quickstart improvements, a major blog post, a sample app).
- Establish a content cadence the team commits to.
- Begin conference-speaker submissions.
Step 4: Third hire: Developer Educator / Technical Writer
With community and publishing operations in place, the Educator owns documentation structure and the maintenance of learning material.
What to hire for:
- Technical writing experience.
- Information-architecture instinct.
- Ability to code, even if not primary skill.
- Calm operational temperament.
Within the first three months, this person should:
- Restructure docs around Diátaxis (Tutorial / How-to / Reference / Explanation).
- Audit and remove stale content.
- Build a tutorial pipeline.
- Improve the quickstart specifically: TTFHW is now a tracked metric.
Step 5: Operational infrastructure (parallel)
While hiring is happening, build:
- A 12-month content roadmap mapped to AAARRRP goals.
- Measurement instrumentation for at least three metrics from each of Layer 1 (program), Layer 2 (community), Layer 3 (activity).
- Cross-functional touchpoints. Weekly sync with PM; monthly review with VP-level stakeholders.
- A documented internal-feedback flow from community to product.
- A starter ambassador / community-recognition program (don’t formalise until you have enough community to draw from: usually around 12 months in).
Step 6: Director or Head of DevRel
When the team is 3 to 5 people, install management. Without this, the team’s strategy can drift, cross-functional integration suffers, and senior individual contributors burn out as default managers.
What to hire for:
- Prior senior DevRel leadership experience.
- Strategic and operational thinking.
- Comfort with executive-level reporting.
- Coaching ability for the IC team.
If you cannot find a great Director hire, promote internally if a candidate is ready, or hire a more senior individual contributor (Staff or Principal level) with leadership potential.
Step 7: Expand by specialisation
After the core four roles, expand by specialisation:
- Domain-specific advocates (AI, mobile, data, security) as appropriate.
- Regional advocates if you have meaningful international audience.
- Developer Marketing Manager for launches and distribution.
- Community Program Manager for the formal ambassador / champion program.
- Developer Success Engineer for activation-deep work.
What not to do
- Do not hire a Principal-level evangelist as your first DevRel hire. Too expensive; no audience yet; structural mismatch.
- Do not leave community operations unowned. Advocacy generates questions and participation that require follow-up.
- Do not let the founder be the only DevRel for a year. Founders are great early voices, but founder-only DevRel does not scale and creates dependency.
- Do not skip strategy. Without stated goals, hiring and activity cannot be evaluated against the business need.
- Do not over-promise to executives. Be specific about what you can deliver in months 1 to 6 vs. months 6 to 18.
- Do not optimise for vanity metrics in the first six months. Followers and stars do not measure activation, retention, support quality, or contribution.
Realistic timeline
| Month | Outcomes |
|---|---|
| 1 to 2 | Strategy locked; first community hire identified |
| 3 to 6 | Community Manager in place; community space launched; first 50 engaged members |
| 6 to 9 | Advocate in place; content cadence established; quickstart improvement shipped |
| 9 to 12 | Educator in place; docs restructured; first measurable activation lift |
| 12 to 18 | First three hires productive; Director hired; first ambassador-program members identified |
| 18 to 24 | Team of 5 to 7; specialisation begins; influenced-pipeline measurement begins |
Plan 12 to 18 months for the first three hires and initial programme. More staffing can shorten parts of the schedule; unclear strategy or delayed hiring will extend it.
What success looks like at 12 months
If the program is on track at month 12, the following are visible:
- Measurable improvement in activation rate or TTFHW (the specific metric depending on goals).
- An active community with at least monthly net positive contributor growth.
- A weekly publishing cadence producing at least one substantial public artefact per week.
- A recurring product-feedback review with decisions and resulting product changes recorded.
- Executive recognition of the function’s value, defensible with data.
- Hired three of the four foundational roles.
If these are not visible at month 12, the program has either been under-resourced or has had strategic clarity problems. Diagnose before doubling down.