Hi everyone!

I'm currently working as a Software Engineer, primarily focused on backend development.

Lately, I've been exploring Developer Relations (DevRel) as a potential career direction.

I'm curious about how people have made the transition from traditional software engineering into Developer Relations.

For those currently working in DevRel or who have made a similar transition:

• What skills and experience are most important to break into DevRel?

• How much emphasis is placed on coding and building projects versus technical writing, tutorials, blogging, and public speaking?

• Is having a portfolio of projects, demos, and technical articles important when applying?

• What AI-related skills or tools would you recommend focusing on, especially for someone interested in AI Developer Relations?

• Are there any entry-level or associate-level DevRel opportunities for people coming from a software engineering background?

I'd really appreciate hearing about your experiences, suggestions, or even mistakes to avoid during the transition.

I'm not necessarily looking for a shortcut into the field. I'd genuinely like to understand what the role involves and how I can fill the gaps, build the right skills and experience to make this transition.

Thanks in advance! Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

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I made physis-replant to save tokens on repeated llm operations and make them inspecatble.

You can see my stats at praxisweb.xyz/me

Hi all, I’m Samyak, a technical writer and developer marketer whos previosly worked for quarq.io and rigyd.com

What I do:

• Technical content: deep-dives, tutorials, benchmark write-ups, and launch posts on AI agents, memory systems, prompt optimization, and evaluation

• Open-source and launch content: release announcements, READMEs, and explainers that get developers to try the project, not just star it

• Developer distribution: Reddit and AI-search (AEO) content, so developers and LLM-powered search both surface your product

• Founder presence on X: positioning and consistent technical threads for founders who’d rather be building

Background: I was Growth Lead at Quarq Labs, where I started as a technical writer. I wrote about our agent and memory work, including benchmark results and our open-source release. I also host a deeptech podcast.

Availability: around 30 hours a week (I can scale up if needed). I’m open to fixed-scope projects or ongoing part-time work.

Recent writing (for Quarq Labs):

• How we scored 98.2 on LongMemEval: [link]

• A gentle introduction to GEPA: [link]

• Quarq Agent is now open source: [link]

Disclosure: I develop a desktop client for Antora, which I mention at the end.


Docs-as-code is great for versioning and review, but in my experience the toolchain (Git, YAML playbooks, CLI builds) is where non-developer writers lose the most time. Typical friction points I keep seeing:


- setting up components and versions without breaking the structure
- finding out what a rename or move breaks before the build fails
- getting a trustworthy preview without a full site build


How do you handle this in your team? Do you put a layer of tooling or training on top, or do writers just learn Git?


I develop AsciiLore, a desktop client for Antora (closed source, paid, 14-day trial), built to attack exactly these points, so I'm biased. I'm more interested in your answers than in selling anything. If you use Antora, I'd like to know what would make you consider such a tool at all.

I already know Git commands, testing basics, DSA and other basic things like OOPs but I'm confused on what to prepare for this role.

Please share your valuable advice and tips.

I've been running meetups for a few years and every time I pick a topic I end up second guessing it. Too basic and the experienced folks skip it, too niche and it's the same five people as always. Lately the "basic" ones (like how to actually use AI tools day to day without the hype) get the best turnout and the most questions, which I honestly didn't expect.

How do you all pick? Do you ask your community first or just go with your gut?

Im a software engineer (6YOE) currently very curious and interested in devrel. I wanted to get some insight on why you love/like your job? What does your day to day look like?

Looking for advice from people who’ve made the engineering ↔ DevRel/DevEx move, especially senior /staff engineers.

Context:
- 5+ YOE, mostly backend/infrastructure
- Moved to the UK last year; now at a public tech company
- Good compensation, equity (~£100K TC) and WLB
- On track for promo next quarter
- Enjoy speaking, demos, and working with developers along with hands-on core distributed systems engineering

Offer:
- Series C AI company, mostly SF-based
- DevRel role under Marketing
- Materially higher compensation (1.5-1.8x) and more upside
- Cross time zone and likely poor WLB

My hesitation: I want more visibility and developer facing work but don’t want to move away from engineering. I also want to preserve the option of returning to core engineering and senior/staff IC levels.

For those who’ve done this:
- How reversible is the move into DevRel?
- Does reporting into Marketing matter?
- Would you trade a strong, stable engineering trajectory for materially higher comp and AI startup upside?
- What would you clarify before accepting?

Hi all, I'm badly in need for a job, so resorting to posting here too

I am 6 years of working experience across software engineering and devrel. Has managed communities, scaled user group program as well as guven talks at varios enterprise events at a lot of companies, community days and college events.

I am based out of India but ok for relocation too. If anyone is hiring, please dm.

Is this a real problem or am I looking at it the wrong way?

I built a tool to help with this but that’s not the point of this post: if the product and docs were perfect, nobody would need support. That's never the case, so every question in your community- mine is Discord and GitHub- points to something missing or unclear. The problem is what happens next. Maybe someone answers, and the thread gets lost in the abyss. Not much longer, someone else hits the same wall.

• Does this make sense?

• Once you find a gap, what makes sure it actually gets fixed?

• Or is this already solved well enough and I'm chasing the wrong problem?

Asking this group to find out how you solve this.

Hi, I’ve been a SWE for a couple years and now considering the transition into DevRel. Just curious what the day to day looks like for DevRel and how much engineering you still do? How has the role evolved with AI?

And if anyone’s made the switch - why did you / how did you know the switch made sense?

Thanks :)

One thing I've noticed after working around DevRel/community/events for years is that the actual event is often the easy part.

The messy part is everything around it. You discover conferences in 10 different places. CFPs have different deadlines. Sponsorship opportunities live in emails. Travel is somewhere in a spreadsheet. Team attendance is in Slack.

Talk submissions are in docs. And then after the event, you're trying to answer questions like:

• How much did we actually spend?

• Which conferences generated useful leads?

• Which events should we attend again?

• Who from the team is going where?

• Which CFPs are we about to miss?

I'm curious how other DevRel teams handle this today.

Do you have one system for this, or is it still some combination of spreadsheets + Slack + calendars + bookmarks + Notion + “I'll remember this”? 😅

I'm asking because I'm building a tool in this space called WIMNE https://wimne.tekents.com/, and I'm trying to understand whether this is actually a problem worth solving or just something DevRel people have collectively accepted as normal.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Tekents, which is building WIMNE, so yes, I have a horse in this race. I'm primarily looking for honest feedback from people actually doing DevRel/community work.

What does your current workflow look like?

There are some flawed assumptions for sure, but I’d love to see this community’s thoughts.

Hey folks, I’m Aspleenic, your newest friendly neighborhood r/DevRel mod!

I’ve been involved in DevRel since the mid to late 2000’s (long before it was called Developer Relations) and things have changed quite a bit.

I can post my observations but I would love to hear where people think we are, what we’ve learned from the past (the good and the bad), and where this work goes in the future.

Happy to discuss all angles!

TLDR: I'm a Software/Solutions Engineer transitioning full-time into DevRel. Roast my portfolio/work: https://pablorotten.github.io/cv/

Hello devrels!

I've been working for over 10 years as a developer across different tech stacks. A few years ago, I took on the challenge of building a complete REST API platform out of a mature product for a major client. Originally, our software was strictly a UI used by internal consultants and customers, but we needed to allow robots 🤖 to join their workflows.

I basically led and owned the project from beginning to end. It was my first client-facing project: gathering requirements, designing endpoints, writing documentation, creating video tutorials, presenting in client meetings, and onboarding technical teams.

The project was a big success, so I partnered with sales to offer these APIs to other customers. That meant more live demos, new endpoints, guides, and support. Officially, my title shifted to "Solutions Engineer". I absolutely loved it, and did it for 3 years.

Then, a company reorg happened. New management shifted focus to a new platform, putting the legacy API product in maintenance mode. My role shifted back to standard full-stack development.

While I still build software every day, stepping back into pure Dev made me miss my Solutions Engineer days a lot. I was good at breaking down complex architectures into accessible concepts, writing documentation, building interactive tools, creating technical videos, and giving live presentations. Then, while research/googling around, I discovered Developer Relations, and now I want to take all my engineering background and go ALL-IN on it.

Recently, I’ve been building DevRel-focused content: technical videos, short-form guides, and interactive documentation tools. I'm also actively working on refining my spoken English for public speaking and conference talks.

I've started applying for DevRel roles through platforms like DevRel Careers and GitHub listings. I’m currently refining my strategy and portfolio to make sure I stand out.

I would love your honest feedback and advice. Feel free to roast my portfolio and work: https://pablorotten.github.io/cv/

TY 😊

i think the 'developers don't engage with our content' complaint is misdiagnosed. We keep treating it as a content problem and pour more effort into the blog, the changelog, the newsletter. but every one of those formats demands the same thing, a developer who stops, sits, and reads. that slot barely exists anymore.

the slot that is wide open is the commute, the gym, the dog walk. That time only takes audio, and audio is the one format devrel almost never ships. i think it's because the gut reaction is 'an ai voice reading our changelog is beneath us.'

ran into a tool recently that auto-generates a daily audio digest straight from a repo's commits and PRs, real rss feed, already running for stuff like the kernel and postgres. not a produced human podcast, just here is what changed, in your ears. sounds janky in theory and i half expected to hate it.

the objection holds right up until you look at how many people actually opened the changelog you hand-wrote last quarter. audio nobody asked for still beats text nobody reads. tell me where that breaks for your community, because i can't find the hole.

fwiw that tool is Podlog, it auto-generates a daily audio digest from a repo's commits and prs with a real rss feed, already running for the kernel and postgres, https://podlog.io?utm_source=s4l&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=podlog&utm_term=reddit&utm_content=post_7de12023-9558-4399-92b6-124e2e11471b

With Smoower.com we built a page to compare and measure developer relation effots across organizations. In past this was not as simple, impossible in parts. LLM's and AI make this possible now.

We collect public signals (documentation freshness, content cadence, community presence, conference participation, plugin ecosystems, response times in public channels, and a few other things), score them against a methodology that is documented and open, and produce a comparable per-company score over time. You can look up your company. You can look up your competitors. You can see how a category like "AI infra" or "developer tools" trends quarter over quarter.

It is not a productivity tool for individual DevRel folks. It is a visibility layer for the field as a whole. The point is not to grade humans. The point is to make the discipline legible to the people who decide whether the discipline continues to exist next year.

If you are running DevRel right now and you want a way to walk into a budget conversation with something other than vibes, that is who this is built for.

Wdyt? Let me know!

Hey all, we're hiring a Head of DevRel in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Tenki is Luxor's compute platform. What started as internal runner infrastructure now powers products like AI code-review agents and sandboxed environments for isolated agent work (ADE), and we're just getting started.

We're looking for someone with real engineering experience who wants to build DevRel from the ground up. You'll be the closest person to how developers actually use what we build, and that feedback should directly influence our roadmap.

This role is highly hands-on. We want someone who is excited to:

• Build in public using Tenki

• Run livestreams tackling real open-source software bugs

• Publish benchmarks openly

• Write technical teardowns when we ship

• Engage with developers where they already are

Whether you've already worked in DevRel or you're an engineer taking your first step into the field, we're open to both. What matters most is strong technical credibility, curiosity, and the drive to create.

Ideally, you're already plugged into the Bay Area developer community through meetups, hackathons, conferences, or open-source work.

If you have a blog, YouTube channel, GitHub presence, or an X account that developers follow, we'd love to hear from you.

Apply here:
https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/luxor/eba7430f-c1f5-4d0b-933a-1b9950ead0b7?utm_source=reddit

Questions? Drop them in the comments or send me a DM, happy to provide more context.

i'm content side, not devrel, but the slack pattern looks the same. four people a day asking where the api keys live. three asking what the rate limit is. it's all in the docs. the docs are not the problem.

the problem is that people ask in slack because asking in slack is faster than reading. and replying to all of them yourself is how you end up not writing anything else that week.

a few months back we set up a system where a bot reads the docs and drafts a reply in-thread. the bot doesn't send. whoever is on rotation that day reads the draft, edits it if it's off, and hits send. response time stays human. the typing-out-the-same-thing-for-the-12th-time tax goes away.

what surprised me: the drafts being visible to the team turned into a docs gap detector. when the draft was wrong, that usually meant the docs were wrong or missing. we started fixing the docs instead of just answering the question. inbox got quieter over a few weeks.

curious how other devrel folks handle this. do you let a bot draft, or do you keep it fully manual? has the docs-feedback loop worked for you, or does it mostly stay noise?

writeup on the setup if it helps: https://runbear.io/use-cases/slack-auto-draft-internal-help-desk?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=slack-auto-draft-internal-help-desk

For those of you who do devrel for open source projects: Have any of you tried reaching out to people who’ve “starred” your project’s GitHub repo? Or is that sort of thing generally frowned upon?

As AI workflows evolve, DevRel roles seem to require much more product thinking around developer experience (DX), onboarding, adoption, and feedback loops.

Curious if others in developer ecosystem and product roles are seeing this shift too.

Developer relations folks — I'm curious, when you're evaluating technical content from an outside agency or contractor, what signals tell you the content was actually written or reviewed by someone with real engineering experience versus someone who just knows how to sound technical or simply AI-generated? And does that distinction affect engagement or trust from your developer audience?

Hey devrel engineers,

I'm currently doing research on how your positions manage or handle issues when developers in your community complain about a broken implementation or setup? With all the new coding agents we all know that devs are just making agents read docs and relying on it to properly implement things based on those docs.

So now I have two questions:

1. How do you currently find out when a developer's integration is broken?

2. If agents are now generating most integration code, has that changed anything for your team?

Would love to hear with anyone who is facing this issue