Manager, Developer Relations

Job Description: Developer Advocacy Lead

Position Overview

Tailscale is seeking a technical leader and program scaler to manage its developer advocacy and relations team. This role involves overseeing the strategic direction of developer advocacy, managing a growing team, and scaling developer marketing, relations, and advocacy across North America, Europe, and globally.

This is a player/coach role, requiring both strategic leadership and hands-on contribution, including speaking at conferences, building demos, and representing Tailscale in developer communities. The ideal candidate will have deep empathy for technical users, strong technical skills, systems-thinking and program management capabilities, and a proven track record of scaling developer-facing programs with measurable impact. This individual will be a key custodian of Tailscale's first impression and brand.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the team: Manage, mentor, and partner with the 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, with a focus on being Tailscale's leading voice in North America.
• Scale our programs: Build repeatable programs to grow developer awareness, education, and engagement across key regions.
• Get us in the right rooms: Improve the talk submission and speaker placement process for relevant conferences in 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 Tailscale's presence in the technical world with clarity, authenticity, and technical depth.

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, with experience in conference CFP submissions and securing high-visibility speaking slots.
• Program management: Strong systems-thinking, template creation, and playbook development skills.
• People management: A strong desire and passion to be a best-in-class people manager, with experience mentoring and developing DevRel talent.
• International experience: Demonstrated success in growing developer awareness outside of North America and measuring its impact.
• Outcome-orientation: Familiarity with key Developer Marketing KPIs and a clear perspective on how to track individual and team success.

About Tailscale

Tailscale is building the new Internet by delivering software that makes it easy to securely interconnect people and their devices, no matter where they are. From hobbyists to multinational corporations, teams of every size use Tailscale each day to protect their networks, share access to internal tools, and more. We're building a future for the Internet that's easy, sensible, and safe, like it used to be. Founded in 2019 and fully distributed, we're backed by Accel, CRV, Insight, Heavybit, and Uncork Capital.

• Salary: [Not specified]
• Location Type: Fully Distributed
• Employment Type: [Not specified]