Developer Advocate

A developer advocate (sometimes called a developer relations or "DevRel" engineer) is the bridge between a technology company and the software developers who use its products - typically APIs, developer tools, cloud services or open-source libraries. They write code samples and tutorials, speak at meetups and conferences, answer questions in developer forums and chat communities, and feed what developers are struggling with back to the product and engineering teams. The job exists because developers tend to distrust conventional marketing, so companies employ technical people to help them genuinely rather than sell at them.

Starting salary: £30k–£45k
Live graduate jobs: 1 open now
Main way in: Moving across internally after a year or two as a software…
They usually ask for: The ability to actually write and ship working code in at least…

Approximate graduate salary

Entry-level and associate roles are typically around £30,000–£45,000 to start, with London and well-funded developer-tools or cloud companies at the higher end and smaller startups or non-London employers lower. This is only an approximation and varies widely - because most people enter after a few years as a software engineer, many "first" DevRel salaries are actually mid-level salaries carried over from an engineering role, and some packages include equity or bonus on top.

What you'd actually do

Building small demo applications or sample projects that show what the company's API or tool can do, then publishing the code publicly (usually on GitHub) so developers can copy and adapt it
Writing technical blog posts, tutorials and getting-started guides, and fixing or improving the official documentation when it's unclear or out of date
Answering questions from developers in public places - community Slack or Discord channels, GitHub issues, Stack Overflow, developer forums - and escalating genuine bugs to the engineering team
Preparing and giving talks, live-coding demos or workshops at meetups, user groups, hackathons and conferences, and recording video walkthroughs or livestreams

Show 3 more

Collecting recurring pain points from the community into feedback for product managers and engineers - e.g. 'ten people this month got stuck at the authentication step' - and sometimes raising pull requests to fix the SDK yourself
Supporting launches: making sure that when a new feature ships there are working examples, a blog post, updated docs and someone available to field questions
Running or helping run community programmes - hackathon sponsorship, student ambassador schemes, open-source contributor onboarding - and tracking how the developer community is responding

How graduates get in

Moving across internally after a year or two as a software engineer, support engineer or solutions engineer at a technology company - this is by far the most common route, because employers want someone who has genuinely built things before they ask them to teach others
Graduate software engineering schemes at larger tech firms, cloud providers and some fintechs, then transferring into the developer relations team once you have shipped real code
Direct junior entry as an 'associate developer advocate', 'developer advocate intern' or 'technical community manager' - these roles exist but are relatively scarce and tend to appear at larger companies with established DevRel teams
Building a public profile while studying or in a first job: maintaining an open-source project, writing a technical blog, speaking at student hackathons or local meetups, making coding videos. Hiring managers in this field genuinely do look at your public output, and it can substitute for formal experience

Show 2 more

Sideways from technical writing, developer support, pre-sales solutions engineering or technical training - all of these overlap heavily with the role
University tech-society organising plus a student ambassador or campus-advocate programme run by a cloud or developer-tools company; these are a recognised feeder but numbers are small

What employers ask for

The ability to actually write and ship working code in at least one mainstream language - JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Java, Go, C# or similar. This is non-negotiable; it is a technical role, not a marketing one with a technical veneer
A degree is common but the subject matters less than demonstrable coding ability. Computer science, software engineering and related subjects are the usual background; plenty of people come from physics, maths or entirely unrelated degrees, from bootcamps, or with no degree at all if their public work is strong
Grade requirements vary a lot - some graduate schemes still filter on a 2:1 and UCAS points, while many specialist tech employers barely look at grades and assess you on a portfolio, a technical exercise or a sample piece of content
Evidence that you can explain technical things to other people: a blog, a YouTube channel, conference or meetup talks, good documentation on a personal project, teaching or tutoring experience, or a strong Stack Overflow/GitHub presence

Show 2 more

Comfort being publicly visible - most roles involve posting under your own name and presenting to rooms (or streams) of strangers
Occasionally a specific domain is required - e.g. machine learning, security, blockchain, embedded systems - where the employer needs you to be credible with specialists in that field

Skills that matter

Hands-on coding in the company's ecosystem

Developers can tell within minutes whether the person teaching them has actually built something, and your demos have to work live in front of an audience.

Technical writing

Most of what you produce is written - tutorials, docs, blog posts - and the test is whether a stranger can follow it from a blank editor to working code without getting stuck.

Public speaking and live demoing

You will present at meetups, conferences and webinars, often live-coding, where things break and you have to keep talking while you fix them.

Empathy for the beginner's experience

The core skill is remembering what it feels like not to know something, so you can spot the step in the documentation where everyone falls over.

Translating between communities and engineers

You have to turn scattered complaints from forums and GitHub into a clear, prioritised case that a product manager will act on.

Judging and explaining impact without hard sales numbers

DevRel sits awkwardly between marketing, product and engineering, so you repeatedly have to justify the value of community work to people who want a revenue figure.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Associate or junior developer advocate: mostly producing content, sample code and documentation set by others, plus answering community questions, often with a more senior advocate reviewing your work.
Developer advocate: owning a product area, technology or regional community - you decide what content is needed, speak at external events and are a recognised point of contact for that area.
Senior or principal developer advocate: shaping the overall developer experience strategy, influencing the product roadmap, mentoring other advocates, and often holding a genuine public profile in a particular technology community.
Head of developer relations or DevRel manager: running a team, setting the community and content strategy, managing a budget for events and sponsorships, and reporting to a VP of Product, Engineering or Marketing.
Sideways moves are common and are not a step back: experienced advocates frequently move into product management, developer experience engineering, technical writing leadership, solutions engineering or back into pure software engineering. Timelines vary a lot - small startups can promote in a year or two, large firms have slower, more formal bands.

What people get wrong

“It's a marketing job for people who like tech but can't really code.”

Most teams expect you to write production-quality sample code, review SDKs, raise pull requests and debug other people's broken setups. Candidates who can present well but can't build are usually screened out at the technical stage.

“It's mostly travel, conferences and free stuff.”

Conference season is a visible but small slice of the year. The bulk of the work is writing, coding and answering questions at a desk - and when you do travel, you are working the booth, running the workshop and flying home tired, not sightseeing.

“You're hired to promote the product, so you can't say anything negative about it.”

Credibility is the whole asset. Good advocates openly acknowledge limitations, point developers to a competitor's tool when it fits better, and are valued internally for carrying uncomfortable feedback to engineering.

“It's a clear, well-defined graduate career path with lots of entry-level vacancies.”

DevRel teams are small, titles are inconsistent (advocate, evangelist, community engineer, developer experience engineer) and genuinely junior openings are limited. Most people arrive after a few years doing something else technical, and teams are sometimes cut first in a downturn because their impact is hard to measure.

Where this varies

The job differs enormously depending on who you work for. At a large cloud or platform company, DevRel is a big, specialised team and you might focus narrowly on one service, with separate people doing content, events and community management. At a startup or scale-up you may be the entire function - writing docs, running the Discord, doing demos on sales calls and fixing the SDK in the same week - and the role can blur into pre-sales or product marketing. Open-source-first companies lean towards maintaining the project and supporting contributors; API and fintech companies lean towards integration tutorials and partner support. Reporting lines vary too: some advocates sit in Engineering and are measured on documentation and product feedback, others sit in Marketing and are measured on sign-ups, content reach and events - which materially changes what the job feels like. Geographically, most UK roles are in London, Cambridge, Manchester, Bristol and Edinburgh, though remote working is more common in this field than in most tech jobs because the community you serve is online anyway.

See all 1 live Developer Advocate jobsFrom employers' own careers sites, updated daily Tailor your CV for this roleFree with an account, 3 a month

General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.