# What a developer advocate does *Developer Marketing · The Litebox team · Last updated: September, 2026 · 7 min read* A developer advocate produces code samples, technical content, and community work that promotes a product into a developer audience that already exists, and hiring one starts with deciding which of two distinct profiles, content-focused or community-focused, your company actually needs. ## Key Facts - One practitioner's per-project framework names seven artifacts developer advocacy work can produce: code samples, a blog post, a presentation or video, a hands-on workshop, social reach, product feedback, and stronger community, partner, or customer relationships. - Content-focused and community-focused developer advocates are largely different people with different skills, and hiring for one while expecting the other is a common source of failed processes. - In Ash Ryan Arnwine's hiring framework, coding ability is a must-have for every candidate, and most of his own hires go through a live coding assessment to confirm it. ## What you need before you start An existing developer community to promote into makes this hire work better. [What DevRel is and when you actually need it](https://litebox.ai/blog/devrel) covers the adjacent decision, building a developer community from nothing, which is a different hire. You also need a decision on which profile you're hiring for before you write the job posting, since the two profiles source and interview differently. Hiring a developer advocate is one specific decision inside the broader territory [Developer marketing: a practical guide](https://litebox.ai/blog/developer-marketing) sets out. ## Decide which profile you actually need Name the business problem before you write the job posting: growing top-of-funnel awareness, or making an existing developer audience more successful. [Justin Gage](https://www.amplifypartners.com/blog-posts/how-do-i-hire-a-developer-advocate-4da3b), of Amplify Partners, distinguishes content-focused advocates, who create blog posts, docs, and technical material, from community-focused advocates, who run events, build relationships, and shuttle product feedback between users and the product team. "If you hire a community-focused advocate and expect them to spend most of their time creating content, you will have an unhappy camper." Gage names the root cause behind failed hiring processes he's seen: "the culprit is usually that the team isn't really on the same page about who they're looking for." Jarod Reyes, who ran marketing at PlanetScale and managed developer advocate teams, ties early-stage hiring to growth specifically, in a conversation the same Amplify Partners piece recounts: "you really should be driving growth (signups, downloads, installs, etc.) and surfacing product feedback." ## Confirm coding ability with a direct test Test every candidate's coding ability yourself, regardless of which profile you're hiring for. [Ash Ryan Arnwine](https://www.ashryan.io/writing/the-3-cs-of-developer-advocacy/), whose "3 Cs" framework has shaped his own hiring for the role, calls this a must-have for all candidates, a position he knows is controversial among some DevRel practitioners: "Coding ability is a must-have for all candidates... I've yet to find a situation where I was hiring for a Developer Advocate and coding wasn't essential to the role." Most of the roles he hires for go through a live coding assessment to confirm it, checking baseline ability in a relevant language, understanding of that language's ecosystem, the ability to propose multiple solutions to one problem, communication under pressure, and a light dusting of system design for the relevant part of the stack. Community stewardship and content creation are the other two Cs. A candidate needs the one matching whichever profile you're hiring for, and a candidate with a track record in both is, in Arnwine's own words, "a very strong signal." ## Check every candidate's portfolio against real artifacts Ask every candidate for real artifacts from a real project. [James Ward](https://jamesward.com/2021/09/26/the-seven-artifacts-of-developer-advocacy-projects/), writing in 2021 after 16 years spent mostly as a developer advocate, describes a project done well as ideally producing seven artifacts together: code samples, a blog post, a presentation or video, a hands-on workshop, social reach, product feedback, and stronger community, partner, or customer relationships, all tied to one clear goal. A portfolio showing several of these together, for one real project, is a stronger signal than a title alone. His standard for the code samples specifically is worth checking directly: "It is shocking how often code samples do not work. Make sure you put your QA hat on and thoroughly test your samples." A candidate's own published samples are easy to run before an interview. ## Define your own metrics, and align them with other teams Write down what you'll measure before the role starts. [Kurtis Kemple](https://kurtiskemple.com/blog/developer-advocates-guide-to-metrics-and-reporting/), author of the book Effective DevRel, first named the trap teams fall into without their own defined metrics: they "abandon their own metrics and instead work towards metrics owned by and credited to other teams like product and marketing." He revisited that guidance in 2025, still building trust for metrics that are new to the company, now paired with actively seeking alignment with cross-functional partners on shared objectives and metrics. Reyes's early-stage guidance gives a concrete starting point for the metrics themselves: growth signals like signups, downloads, and installs, plus product feedback surfaced back to the team. Working out the exact right signals happens once real data exists. ## How you know it's working Look for whether the artifacts the advocate produces, whichever profile you hired for, are traceable to growth signals your team already tracks, or to product feedback that visibly changed a decision. Reyes's own approach applies here too: "Do a lot of stuff, measure it and worry later if it's the right stuff." ## What goes wrong The most common failure, per Gage, is hiring without agreement on which profile you need, then being disappointed when a community-focused hire doesn't produce a content calendar. The second is treating "developer advocate" as the only possible title. Gage's own advice: "you need specific problems solved," and a content marketer or community manager with the right technical background can solve the same problem under a different title. Gage adds a caveat to both alternate titles. A content marketer usually lacks the technical depth to write for developers, and a community manager usually can't build technical trust without being technical themselves. That gap is why teams end up back at "developer advocate" regardless of title. A third failure shows up after the hire, in how much direction the role gets. Gage distinguishes candidates who can own a function, building a content strategy, deciding what to measure, eventually hiring a team around them, from candidates who do good work when someone else sets the direction. Throwing an individual contributor into the role with no direction and an expectation that they'll figure out their own roadmap is, in Gage's account, a recipe for failure. If the role actually needs someone who can own the function independently, screen for that directly with higher-level questions about strategy and team-building. ## FAQ ### What does a developer advocate do? A developer advocate promotes a product into a developer community that already exists, producing some mix of code samples, technical content, presentations, workshops, and product feedback, depending on whether the role is content-focused or community-focused. ### What should I look for when hiring a developer advocate? Coding ability, tested directly, and a portfolio showing real artifacts, code samples, blog posts, talks, or community work, matched to the specific profile your company needs. ### Content-focused or community-focused developer advocate, which do I need? It depends on the business problem. Content-focused advocates grow top-of-funnel awareness through technical material. Community-focused advocates make an existing developer audience more successful through events, relationships, and product feedback. Deciding this before you post the job avoids the most common failed hire. ### How do I measure whether a developer advocate is working? Start with growth signals already relevant at your stage, signups, downloads, installs, and product feedback that visibly reaches the product team, and write these down as your own metrics, worked out in alignment with the teams you share goals with. Deciding the profile before the job posting is the step that determines whether the rest of a hire goes well. If your team is at that decision point, our [DevTools startup program](https://litebox.ai/services) is where we help make that call. [All articles](https://litebox.ai/blog) · [Talk to the team](https://litebox.ai/contact-us) --- HTML version: https://litebox.ai/blog/developer-advocate · All pages: [sitemap.xml](https://litebox.ai/sitemap.xml) · Agent guide: [llms.txt](https://litebox.ai/llms.txt)