DRC Survey IV: DevRel Job Titles and Salaries

Job Title

One area of interest to most practitioners is job title. We were interested in examining which titles predominate, and whether the titles cluster around differences in pay and/or experience level.

About the buckets

To glean some basic understanding of current norms, we created several rough buckets of titles. These buckets were “DevRel Management,” “Developer Advocate,” “Developer Evangelist,” “Technical Community Manager” and “Developer Experience.” Some responses did not fall into any of these buckets and are therefore not displayed in the chart. An example of one such response is “Event Management,” which was removed because it was so small that it could not be anonymized.

As we have noted previously, the samples are on the small side, and skewed toward the US. This is important to note, because titles can be highly influenced by regional trends and norms.

Job title

In descending order, “Developer Advocate” is the largest group, with almost half of the respondents holding a DA role (47.3 percent). DevRel Management ranks just below at 25.7%; then Developer Evangelist at 10.8%; Technical Community Managers at 5.4%; and Developer Experience at 2.0 percent. Responses that fell into other categories accounted for 8.8% of answers.

A challenge faced by many practitioners is the overlapping and occasionally arbitrary nature of titles in the field. Additionally, since DevRel is currently gaining interest as a specific profession, longtimers frequently find they have been effectively performing the role of (for example) a developer advocate since before the title existed. 

Salaries by bucket

Salary ranges for the buckets are below, with the highest and lowest figures for each bucket group. The caveats: because of issues with currencies, this table displays salary information reported in US dollars. As previously stated, salaries in excess of $700,000 USD were removed, as we are unable to determine whether those are typographical errors or accurately reported outliers. The table does not display Developer Experience, because the sample was too small.

The highest values reported came from US-based respondents. The top five values were all in the US, and 90% of the top ten values came from the US)

¹ While this figure of $14,000 seems low, we decided to display it. Potential caveats to be aware of: the lowest values were located in several non-US countries with small sample sizes. It’s possible that such values are significantly lower because of currency conversion rates; or the number could be a typographical error.

It’s worth noting that the “DevRel Management” also refers to level, while the other categories draw mostly on function. For example, while a community manager falls under the Technical Community Manager category, a Director or Head of Community position is grouped under DevRel Management. 

Buckets and tenure/career stage

Survey Questions

• “How many years have you been at this company? If it’s a brand new job, please put 0.”

• “How many years have you been in Developer Relations? We recognize DevRel is a relatively new title. Feel free to list how long you’ve been in DevRel-like positions.”

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 | Pt. 3 | Pt. 4 | Pt. 5 | Pt. 6 | Pt. 7 | Pt. 8

Conclusion and Takeaways

Appendix A: | Appendix B:

SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR DATA SCIENTIST, GREG SUTCLIFFE

Greg Sutcliffe has been working in community management for a decade, and is currently the Principal Data Scientist for the Ansible Community. He's interested in how appropriate use of data can inform the development and governance of communities, especially with regards to open source projects. He also likes cooking.