13 INDUSTRIES ✣
Industries and Verticals Served by Developer Relations.
DevRel is most concentrated in software and infrastructure but is increasingly practised across many industries whose products touch developers in some way. This file maps where the function operates and how it differs across categories.
DevRel is most concentrated in software and infrastructure but is increasingly practised across many industries whose products touch developers in some way. This file maps where the function operates and how it differs across categories.
Software infrastructure and developer tools
The historic core of DevRel.
- Cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure, Cloudflare, DigitalOcean, Oracle Cloud, IBM Cloud).
- Container and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes, the CNCF ecosystem).
- Infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Pulumi, Crossplane, Ansible).
- Observability (Datadog, New Relic, Sentry, PagerDuty, Honeycomb).
- Security (Snyk, Okta/Auth0, Cloudflare security products, Veracode, GitGuardian).
- CI/CD (GitHub Actions, CircleCI, GitLab CI, Buildkite, Earthly).
- DevTools (GitHub, GitLab, JetBrains, VS Code/Microsoft, replit, Vercel, Netlify, Render).
Characteristics of DevRel here. Direct-to-engineer messaging, heavy documentation investment, large open-source presence, conference-heavy. Most mature DevRel teams operate here.
API-first companies
A major category of its own.
- Communications APIs (Twilio, Vonage, Plivo, MessageBird/Bird, Sinch, Ably).
- Payments / fintech APIs (Stripe, Plaid, Modern Treasury, Adyen, Marqeta).
- Email APIs (SendGrid (Twilio), Mailgun, Postmark, Resend, Loops).
- Identity APIs (Auth0, Okta, Clerk, WorkOS, Stytch).
- Search APIs (Algolia, Elastic).
- Content APIs (Contentful, Sanity, Strapi, Storyblok, Hygraph, Builder.io, Prismic).
- AI APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Mistral, Replicate, Together AI).
Characteristics. PLG-driven; quickstart obsession; documentation-as-product orientation.
Databases and data infrastructure
- Relational (PostgreSQL ecosystem: Neon, Supabase, Crunchy Data, EDB; MySQL ecosystem: PlanetScale, MariaDB).
- NoSQL and document (MongoDB, Couchbase, DynamoDB-adjacent, Firebase).
- Time-series (InfluxData, TimescaleDB, QuestDB).
- Graph (Neo4j, TigerGraph).
- Vector (Pinecone, Weaviate, Chroma, Qdrant, Milvus).
- Analytics / warehouse (Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift, ClickHouse, DuckDB).
- Streaming (Confluent / Kafka, Redpanda, RisingWave).
Characteristics. Strong technical-content emphasis; large open-source communities; deep documentation; conference-heavy.
AI / ML
The newest large category. Discussed extensively in ../05-companies/ai-companies.md.
- Foundation-model providers.
- Open-source model hubs.
- Orchestration frameworks.
- Vector databases.
- AI infrastructure.
- Agent and coding tools.
Characteristics. Fast-moving; documentation-as-product critical; agent-experience emerging as deliberate function.
Operating systems and platforms
- Apple (iOS, macOS, visionOS).
- Google (Android, ChromeOS).
- Microsoft (Windows).
- Linux distributions (Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu/Canonical, Debian).
Characteristics. Long-running developer programs; certification-heavy; conference-heavy.
Mobile / cross-platform
- Native ecosystems (Apple, Google).
- Cross-platform frameworks (React Native, Flutter, Ionic, Capacitor, .NET MAUI).
- Mobile backend (Firebase, Supabase, Appwrite).
- App distribution / monetisation (RevenueCat, Adapty, Apphud).
Characteristics. Platform-bound; SDK-heavy; certification-friendly.
Gaming
- Engines (Unity, Unreal, Godot, Bevy).
- Cloud and back-end (Epic Online Services, PlayFab/Microsoft, Beamable).
- Asset platforms (Sketchfab, ArtStation).
Characteristics. Strong community emphasis; long-running franchises (Unity DevRel is one of the older programs); conference-heavy (GDC, Unite, Unreal Fest).
DevRel parallel. Gaming DevRel has more in common with creator-economy DevRel than with infrastructure DevRel.
Hardware and embedded
- Semiconductors (NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, ARM, Qualcomm).
- Microcontrollers / embedded (Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Adafruit, Espressif/ESP).
- Specialised (RISC-V community, Pimoroni).
Characteristics. Substantial documentation; hardware kit programs; long-running.
NVIDIA’s developer program, in particular, has become one of the most strategically important in technology in the AI era.
Fintech and financial services
A growing developer-facing category.
- Payments APIs (Stripe, Adyen, Square).
- Banking APIs (Plaid, Modern Treasury, Unit, Treasury Prime).
- Crypto / web3 developer tools (Alchemy, Infura, QuickNode, Coinbase Developer Platform). A separate sub-category.
- Trading APIs (Alpaca, Polygon.io).
- Compliance / KYC APIs (Onfido, Persona).
Characteristics. Regulatory friction in onboarding; technical content is often education-heavy (regulations, best practices); shorter lists of high-value customers than pure-volume PLG.
E-commerce and retail platforms
- Shopify (developer platform). Massive — third-party apps, themes, Shopify Functions.
- WooCommerce, BigCommerce. Substantial.
- Salesforce Commerce Cloud.
- Magento (Adobe Commerce).
Characteristics. Long-running marketplace dynamics; agency and partner ecosystems; certification programs.
Industrial / IoT
- AWS IoT, Azure IoT, GCP IoT.
- Specialised (Particle, Helium, Balena).
- Industrial protocols (OPC UA, MQTT brokers).
Characteristics. Specialised audiences; long sales cycles; technical content overlap with embedded.
Healthcare and life sciences
A smaller but growing developer-facing category.
- Genomics APIs (Illumina developer programs, 10x Genomics).
- Healthcare APIs (Particle Health, Redox, Health Gorilla, FHIR-based platforms).
- Clinical-trial software platforms.
Characteristics. Regulatory complexity; smaller addressable audiences; technical-marketing weighted.
Government and public sector
- Civic-tech developer ecosystems.
- Government API portals (api.gov.uk, api.gov.au, data.gov, USDS-related work).
- Public-sector-focused developer products.
Characteristics. Slower; relationship-driven; compliance-heavy.
Creator / no-code / low-code
- Bubble, Webflow, Framer, Glide.
- Zapier, Make, n8n, Pipedream.
- Notion, Airtable.
Characteristics. Hybrid developer / non-developer audiences; DevRel may blur into creator-economy work.
How DevRel differs across these industries
A simplified pattern:
| Industry | DevRel scale | Documentation centrality | Community emphasis | Sales motion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud / DevTools | Very large | High | Medium-High | PLG + Enterprise |
| API-first | Large | Very high | Medium | PLG |
| Databases / Data | Large | Very high | High | PLG + Enterprise |
| AI / ML | Growing fast | Very high | High | PLG |
| OS / platforms | Very large | High | High (recognition-program-led) | Platform / OEM |
| Mobile / cross-platform | Medium | High | Medium | Platform-bound |
| Gaming | Medium | Medium | Very high (community-led) | Platform / freemium |
| Hardware | Medium | High | Medium | OEM / direct |
| Fintech | Medium | High | Low | Enterprise sales-led |
| E-commerce platforms | Medium | High | High (agency-led) | Partner / channel |
| Industrial / IoT | Smaller | Medium | Smaller | Enterprise sales-led |
| Healthcare | Smaller | High (regulatory) | Smaller | Enterprise sales-led |
| Government | Smaller | High | Low | Procurement-led |
| Creator / no-code | Growing | Medium | High | PLG / creator |