Head of Developer Relations

About the Job:

Developers and their teams are adapting to new ways of building and shipping software as AI becomes a core part of their daily workflows. AI is accelerating development, but it is also expanding the risk surface in production. Developers need control, clarity, and safe ways to move fast. We’re looking for a Developer Relations Leader to support and empower developers through this transition. This leader will define and scale a Developer Relations and Experience strategy that strengthens developer trust, accelerates adoption, and shapes how LaunchDarkly serves developers. They will shape our long term strategy for community, education, advocacy, and onboarding in ways that accelerate adoption, strengthen developer trust, and influence the broader developer experience so development teams can adopt modern delivery practices with confidence.

Responsibilities:

Strategy and Leadership

• Develop and lead the strategy for Developer Relations and Experience with a focus on enabling developer success in ways that naturally support product adoption and customer value.
• Lead, mentor, and grow a multi disciplinary DevRel organization.
• Establish strong, collaborative ways of working with Product, Engineering, Marketing, Growth, and Docs to ensure developers receive a unified and consistent experience.

Developer Success, Onboarding, and Delivery Maturity

• Influence cross team strategy and roadmap decisions that support awareness, activation, and usage among developers. Drive hands on activations that advance these goals.
• Partner with Product and Engineering to ensure that onboarding, tutorials, demos, quick starts, guides, and evaluation flows are intuitive and high-quality.
• Create scalable ways to help teams adopt LaunchDarkly with minimal friction by using developer feedback to shape our approach. Deliver hands on programs that support growth toward more mature delivery practices.
• Partner with Product and Docs to shape and support a documentation strategy that serves both traditional learning and AI assisted workflows.
• Develop practical guidance and examples that help teams address real challenges in their delivery process so they can ship safely and with confidence.

Advocacy, Awareness, and Community Support

• Partner with go-to-market teams to shape narratives that resonate with developers and technical decision makers.
• Represent LaunchDarkly at meetups, conferences, online communities, and industry events.
• Build and nurture community programs, developer events, and workshops.
• Build relationships with influencers, contributors, and technical champions, and collaborate with them to broaden reach and support more teams in improving their delivery practices.
• Amplify customer stories, use cases, and product launches through developer facing channels.

Voice of the Developer

• Establish structured, prioritized feedback loops between developers and internal teams, shaping product and documentation improvements.
• Identify friction across the developer journey and partner cross functionally to remove it.
• Ensure that LaunchDarkly consistently delivers an experience that meets the expectations of modern software teams.

Qualifications:

• Typically brings at least 15 years of experience in Developer Relations, Developer Experience, or related technical advocacy roles, along with a minimum of 7 years of leadership experience.
• Strong technical foundation; able to discuss APIs, SDKs, integrations, and developer workflows with credibility.
• Proven track record building communities, programs, and content that resonate with developers.
• Excellent communication and public speaking skills.
• Ability to partner deeply with Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Growth teams.
• Experience shaping developer onboarding, documentation, and engagement programs.
• Experience supporting PLG and self-serve product motions through content, demos, and advocacy.
• Hands-on experience creating technical content (talks, blogs, videos, sample apps, demos).
• Established presence or reputation within developer communities or open-source ecosystems.

Pay:

Target pay ranges based on Geographic Zones* for Level M4:

• Zone 1: San Francisco/Bay Area or NYC Metropolitan Area, Boston, Seattle - $191,000 - $263,000**
• Zone 2: Irvine, LA, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa, Austin, Portland, Philadelphia, Chicago - $172,000 - $237,000**
• Zone 3: All other US locations - $163,000 - $224,000**
• Inclusive of a 10% Bonus Target

LaunchDarkly operates from a place of high trust and transparency; we are happy to state the pay range for our open roles to best align with your needs. Exact compensation may vary based on skills, experience, and location.

*Within the United States, our geographic pay zones are defined by counties surrounding major metropolitan areas.
**Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), health, vision, and dental insurance, and mental health benefits in addition to salary.

About LaunchDarkly:

Modern software delivery was supposed to be the foundation for a thriving digital business but reality has proven otherwise. Slow, inefficient development cycles, costly outages, and fragmented customer experiences are preventing developers from building their best software. The LaunchDarkly platform helps developers innovate on new features faster while protecting them with a safety valve to instantly rewind when things go wrong. Developers can target product experiences to any customer segment and maximize the business impact of every feature. And by gradually rolling out new application components, they escape nightmare "big-bang" technology migrations.

The LaunchDarkly platform was built to guide engineers to the next frontier of DevOps by:

• Improving the velocity and stability of software releases, without the fear of end customer outages
• Delivering targeted experiences by easily personalizing features to customer cohorts
• Maximizing the business impact of every feature through the ability to experiment and optimize
• Coordinating the release and optimization of software to provide consistent experiences across mobile platforms and device types
• Improving the effectiveness and productivity of engineering teams, by providing insights into engineering cadence and stability

At LaunchDarkly, we believe in the power of teams. We're building a team that is humble, open, collaborative, respectful and kind. We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. LD invites any applicant to review our written Affirmative Action Plan. To do so, contact People Ops at [email protected].

Do you need a disability accommodation?

Fill out this accommodations request form and someone from our People Operations team will contact you for assistance.