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Salary: USD 161,000 - 201,000 / annual
Tailscale is seeking an experienced Manager of Developer Relations Engineering to lead a team of technical builders who help developers discover, understand, adopt, and build with Tailscale's secure networking platform. This is a player-coach role combining team leadership with hands-on technical execution.
You will be accountable for turning Tailscale's technology into compelling developer experiences—integrations, example applications, demos, tutorials, open-source projects, and technical content—that drive meaningful developer and business outcomes. You'll lead the Developer Relations Engineering team while continuing to build yourself: developing integrations, demos, prototypes, workshops, and educational experiences that showcase what's possible with Tailscale.
Key responsibilities include:
- Leading the DevRel Engineering team and roadmap, translating company and product priorities into focused technical projects and programs
- Managing and developing high-performing Developer Relations Engineers, setting clear expectations, providing meaningful technical ownership, and coaching both senior and developing talent
- Building high-quality technical experiences including integrations, example applications, open-source projects, demos, workshops, and reference architectures
- Personally contributing to high-leverage technical projects: writing code, reviewing pull requests, debugging integrations, and creating working demos alongside the team
- Serving as a visible technical voice through videos, presentations, demos, integrations, workshops, and community engagement
- Ensuring DevRel work is technically accurate, engaging, relevant, and aligned with product positioning
- Partnering closely with Product, Engineering, Growth, Content, Sales, and Customer Success to coordinate launches and identify developer ecosystem opportunities
- Defining, tracking, and reporting on DevRel performance metrics including audience growth, engagement, product activation, integration adoption, and self-serve funnel contribution
- Using qualitative developer insight and performance data to prioritize programs and demonstrate DevRel investment value
This role partners closely across Product, Engineering, Growth, Content, Sales, Customer Success, and Marketing. You'll maintain a clear technical roadmap, surface developer friction and emerging use cases back to product, and build systems to measure which DevRel investments drive adoption.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 6+ years of relevant experience in Developer Relations, developer advocacy, engineering, or related field
- 2+ years of experience managing, coaching, or leading technical contributors and scaling a DevRel or similar function
- Strong software engineering foundation: comfortable writing and reviewing production-quality code, working with APIs and developer tooling, debugging technical problems, and getting hands-on with unfamiliar technologies
- Experience building developer-facing technical projects such as integrations, SDK examples, reference applications, open-source tools, demos, workshops, or developer infrastructure—from idea through launch and iteration
- Ability to translate product and company priorities into a focused technical roadmap for a small team, making thoughtful trade-offs between experimentation, education, integrations, and other projects
- Strong program management skills: planning, prioritization, delegation, and proactive risk communication
- Strong developer-product instincts and ability to recognize where developers get stuck and whether the solution is a product change, integration, tool, example, tutorial, or explanation
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly and engagingly
- Experience collaborating cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Marketing, Growth, Sales, or Customer Success teams
- Ability to balance hands-on execution with team leadership and long-term program development
- Experience working in public codebases and developer ecosystems, including comfort with GitHub workflows, pull requests, issue discussions, and collaborating with external developers
- Experience defining and reporting on DevRel metrics, program performance, or contribution to product and business outcomes
- Comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-moving environments and creating clarity through direct communication and documented plans
- Low ego, high horsepower with a "yes, and" mindset to collaboration
- Must have tried and used Tailscale
About Tailscale
AI / Data / Infrastructure; SaaS / Enterprise Software — secure networking platform built on WireGuard.
