Manager, Developer Relations

Job Description

We are looking for a technical leader and program scaler to manage our developer advocacy and relations team and help oversee the strategic direction of developer advocacy at Tailscale. You’ll manage a small but growing team that includes our Lead Developer Advocate, Senior Community Manager, and Technical Content Manager, who together scale our Developer Marketing, Relations, and Advocacy across North America, Europe, and beyond.

This is a player/coach role: you’ll not only work with your team to set a vision and roadmap for developer marketing at Tailscale, but you’ll also be expected to roll up your sleeves, speak at conferences, build demos, and represent Tailscale in developer communities and spaces directly.

The ideal candidate has deep empathy for technical users, is highly technical themselves and uses Tailscale, has strong systems-thinking and program management skills, and a track record of scaling developer-facing programs with measurable impact. In many ways, you will be the custodian of Tailscale’s first impression and brand.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the team: manage, mentor, and partner with our Lead Developer Advocate, Senior Community Manager, and Technical Content Manager.
• Be a voice for Tailscale: speak at conferences, run workshops, appear in webinars, and create demo-rich content for a global developer audience. We’re especially looking for someone who can be Tailscale’s leading voice in North America – both in person and feeding into our digital outlets. You’ll be complemented by a teammate who will cover this role in Europe.
• Scale our programs: build repeatable programs to grow developer awareness, education, and engagement in North America, Europe, and beyond.
• Get us in the right rooms: improve our talk submission and speaker placement process for key conferences across DevOps, security, infrastructure, IT, and more.
• Measure and grow: define and track KPIs for developer marketing, relations, and advocacy (e.g., reach, content engagement, brand awareness, community growth, attribution to PLG funnel).
• Collaborate cross-functionally: partner with engineering, product, growth, sales, customer success, solutions engineering, and marketing teams to ensure developer initiatives are strategic, measurable, relevant, and high-leverage.
• Evolve our voice: help shape how Tailscale shows up in the technical world with clarity, authenticity, and technical nerdiness.

What We Are Looking For

• Proven expertise: minimum of 5-8+ years in developer-facing roles, including 2+ years in a lead or senior role with a measurable track record of impact
• Technical aptitude: experience using Tailscale and technical depth in networking, infrastructure, security, and/or developer tools
• Storytelling: excellent public speaking and technical storytelling skills. Experience with conference CFPs and securing high-visibility speaking slots
• Program management: you think in systems, templates, and repeatable playbooks
• People management: a strong desire to be a best-in-class people manager. We want someone who is excited and passionate about being a people manager and has experience mentoring and developing DevRel talent
• International: demonstrated success growing developer awareness outside of North America and measuring this impact
• Outcome-orientation: familiarity with key Developer Marketing KPIs and a perspective on how best to track individual and team performance

Nice to Have

• You are a Tailscale power-user and already a Tailscale advocate
• Prior experience as a software engineer or SRE
• Strong presence on dev-focused platforms (e.g., GitHub, Mastodon, YouTube, Reddit, Stack Overflow)
• Experience building or contributing to open source communities
• Previous people management experience

As a company, we strive to maintain fair and equitable compensation practices within our team across all roles and all levels. Tailscale's compensation package includes base salary, equity, and comprehensive benefits. The salary range displayed on each job posting represents the target range for a new hire's base salary. Individual offers may vary based on experience and skill set.