The most common question I’ve gotten lately about my career has been, “What is Developer Relations?” Honestly, if you ask anyone else in a similar boat, you’ll always get a different response. But that’s for a very good reason.
Choosing Developer Relations doesn’t mean throwing away the years I’ve spent studying and working in software engineering. Instead, it gives me the opportunity to use that experience in a different capacity.
I still am technical
My interest in Developer Relations is not about stepping away from engineering. It comes from caring deeply about what happens after something is built.
Nowadays, with AI making it possible to build much faster than before, it’s the part after shipping that becomes the problem.
Does a developer understand why it matters? Can they get started without fighting the documentation? Do they feel confident enough to experiment? When they get stuck, is anyone listening?
Building the product is only part of the work. Helping people discover what they can do with it is another technical problem worth solving. I guess the problem-solving mindset never truly leaves after you decide to study engineering.
My background in software engineering gives me a way to meet developers where they are and understand their experiences. When I first stepped into technology, I had that same feeling of opening unfamiliar documentation, debugging an integration, and learning new software terminology for the first time.
What resonated most with me during my learning journey was being able to watch a video and understand something in a few minutes, or build something new by following an online tutorial. Now, the opportunity to help other developers like me in that same way is what led me to discover the path of Developer Relations.
I want to make technical things feel possible
I saw Developer Relations as the gap between developers and learning a new product or tool that advances their career in some way.
The average person isn’t going to be looking for the fanciest technology or the latest thing a company ships. Instead, they are looking for a solution to their problems. As I put my best foot forward in what I do, my focus has been on helping to solve those problems. At the end of the day, I’d rather help solve a problem than count the number of views or likes a post gets.
So, if I can help one person learn something new about a topic, it’s a win. I’m giving someone the fundamentals to carry them forward with any new technical tool they discover or build with, even if it’s not the product I represent.
As I continue working in Developer Relations, I’ve also realized that it isn’t another version of marketing, sales, or software engineering. Developer Relations is its own discipline. If anything, I’ll have to keep proving that throughout my career.
It makes room for all of me
I have always moved between technical and creative work. I grew up pursuing creative hobbies and ventures, then found my way into problem-solving by studying software engineering. I care about how systems work, but I also care about how ideas are presented, how stories are told, and whether people feel invited into a space where they want to belong.
Code helps me build credible examples and understand what I’m talking about. Teaching helps me explain the decisions behind them and strengthen my communication skills. Art and storytelling help me make the explanation memorable. Community work reminds me that the best developer experiences are shaped with people, not just delivered to them in a pitch that has no relevance to their personal experiences.
Instead of flattening those parts of myself into a single job title, DevRel asks me to connect them and use them in a more unified way throughout my work.
Why I am choosing it now
Through my experiences in software engineering, community leadership, and developer advocacy, I have learned that I feel most energized when I am close to both the product and the people using it.
I am still figuring out exactly what kind of Developer Relations professional I want to become. That uncertainty does not make the choice feel less real. It makes it feel like a field with room to grow into.