--- title: "Hiring a developer advocate: when your startup needs DevRel" description: Only developer-tool and API startups need DevRel early. How to scope a first developer advocate who ships code and docs, measure them and interview well. image: https://funded.club/hubfs/og_image_funded.png --- [![Primary\_logo](https://funded.club/hubfs/Primary_logo.svg)](https://funded.club/) [Book a call](https://funded.club/contact-us) - [Hire](https://funded.club) - [Pricing](https://funded.club/pricing) - [Find a job](https://funded.club/startupjobs) - [Case Studies](https://funded.club/case-studies) - [Locally](https://funded.club/case-studies/locally) - [Supernova](https://funded.club/case-studies/supernova) - [Isolocity](https://funded.club/case-studies/isolocity) - [WeTravel](https://funded.club/case-studies/wetravel) - [Digital Science](https://funded.club/case-studies/digital-science) - [Blog](https://funded.club/blog-results) - [Resources](https://funded.club/resources) - [Predict success](https://signup.predict.ventures/) - [Growth Planner](https://funded.club/growth-planner) - [Glossary](https://funded.club/glossary) - [FAQ](https://funded.club/faq) - [Contact us](https://funded.club/contact-us) [Book a call](https://funded.club/contact-us) - Engagement options: - [Hiring solutions](https://funded.club) - [Pay-as-you-go](https://funded.club/pricing) - Membership plan # Hiring a developer advocate: when your startup needs DevRel [Ray Gibson](https://funded.club/blog/author/ray-gibson) Nov 15, 2026, 5:16:21 AM *Updated November 2026* Hire a developer advocate early only if developers are the people who adopt, evaluate or buy your product, which in practice means developer tools and API companies. The first advocate at a startup should spend most of their week shipping code samples, docs and fixes, with talks and social posts as the smaller part of the job. Make a review of their past work the centre of the interview, and measure them on developer activation instead of audience size. ## Which startups need DevRel early DevRel exists to make outside developers successful with your product. If developers only touch your product after a business buyer has signed, that work belongs to solutions engineering or customer success, and an advocate will struggle to find a job worth doing. Too early - You sell to business buyers and developers integrate after the contract - Breaking API changes still ship most months - Nobody can try the product without a sales call - The brief is to build buzz before launch Ready - Developers can sign up and make a first call alone - You can see where they drop off after signup - Developer questions land on founders and engineers every day - Docs are written by whoever shipped the feature The example for this page is an illustrative 15-person seed-stage company selling a data enrichment API to backend engineers. The founders answer most community questions themselves, and the quickstart is eighteen months old. Signups are healthy, but few reach a first successful API call. That company is ready. API stability is the condition founders tend to skip. The first advocate becomes your de facto docs owner, so a v2 with breaking changes on the way will swallow their first quarter. Hire once v2 is agreed, or make the migration guide their first project. ## The first advocate ships code and docs Suggested split of a first-year week Code samples, sample apps and SDK fixes 35% Docs and tutorials 30% Answering the community 20% Talks, posts and events 15% Many DevRel candidates come from large companies where the job is mostly talks and content, backed by docs and solutions teams that a 15-person startup does not have. An advocate who cannot open a pull request against your SDK or fix a broken code sample will spend their first months writing about the product instead of improving it. Give the role commit access and a seat in engineering planning from day one. The best early advocates act as the voice of the outside developer, filing issues on every rough edge they hit while building sample apps. That only works if engineers treat those issues as real bugs, which is easier when the advocate reports to the CTO or head of product. Under marketing, the role tends to drift towards top-of-funnel numbers. ## Defining success without vanity metrics Audience numbers can grow without a single developer shipping anything. Measure what developers do with the product. | Instead of | Measure | Where to see it | | --- | --- | --- | | Followers and talk attendance | **Developer activation: the share of new signups who make a first successful API call within a week** | Signup and first-call events in product analytics | | Blog page views | **Docs quality: how long a new developer takes to finish the quickstart, and tickets the docs should have prevented** | Timed run-throughs with outside developers, ticket tags | | Community size | **Community questions answered, how quickly, and how many by other members** | Forum, Slack and GitHub issue history | | GitHub stars | **Sample apps and integrations used in real projects** | Forks, referrers, issues opened against samples | In the example company, the first-quarter goal would be a single number: the share of new signups reaching a first successful call within a week. A rewritten quickstart and sample apps in the two most-requested languages should both be traceable to it. Write the measures into the [job scorecard](https://funded.club/blog/job-scorecard-startup-role) before the search starts, or the role will default to whatever is easiest to report. ## Make the portfolio review the centre of the interview Stage 1 Screen 30 minutes on what they have built and who used it. Stage 2 Portfolio review 60 minutes on two or three pieces they choose. Stage 3 Cold start One hour using your public docs, narrating the friction. Stage 4 Team An engineer and a founder, on working together. A developer advocate's work is mostly public, so you can study it before the first call. Ask each candidate to choose a tutorial, a sample app, a docs section or an open source contribution they are proud of. Ask what they would change now, who used it and how they knew it helped. Before that interview, clone one of their sample repositories and try to run it. A sample that no longer works tells you how they treat maintenance, which is much of the job at a startup. The cold start is where strong candidates separate themselves. Give them an account and ask them to make a first successful call using only your public docs, saying aloud what confuses them. Keep it to an hour so it does not turn into unpaid work. A good candidate finds several real problems and suggests a fix for each. **Red flag:** a portfolio made only of talk recordings and social threads, with no repository or docs they wrote themselves. Be equally wary of candidates who cannot say whether any piece of their work changed what developers did. ## What a recruiter fee looks like for a developer advocate Take an illustrative base salary of $140,000, and benchmark against current data for your market. A contingency recruiter charging 20 to 25% would bill $28,000 to $35,000 for that hire. On Funded.club's fixed-fee bands, a role up to $150,000 costs $11,500, agreed before the search starts. All the bands are on our [pricing page](https://funded.club/pricing). ## Where Funded.club fits We are a fixed-fee recruiting partner for funded startups and fast-growing teams across North America, Europe and APAC, and we have helped 500+ startups from Seed to Series D. DevRel sits across two of the areas we hire for, engineering and marketing. One dedicated recruiter runs your search end to end, and you see first screened candidates within 7 days. Our average is 33 days from kick-off to hire. Fees average 6 to 9% of salary, with part paid as an advance and the balance when your candidate accepts. If we do not deliver a shortlist of at least 3 qualified candidates within 30 days, you can claim the advance back in full. ## Frequently asked questions ### When should a startup hire its first developer advocate? When developers can sign up and use the product without a sales call, and founders or engineers spend real time answering their questions. Startups that sell to business buyers usually do not need DevRel early. ### What is the difference between a developer advocate and a technical writer? A technical writer owns documentation. A first developer advocate at a startup writes docs too, and also builds sample apps, fixes SDK issues and answers the community. ### Should DevRel report to marketing or engineering? At an early startup, reporting to the CTO or head of product usually works better, because the first advocate's output is code and docs. Marketing can make sense later, once there is a docs owner. ### How do you measure a developer advocate without vanity metrics? Track developer activation, such as the share of new signups making a first successful API call, along with docs quality and how quickly community questions get answered. Worth a brief chat about your next hire? 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