How to Position DevRel within a Tech Company
Should DevRel report to marketing, engineering, product, or sales? How to get this right?
What's the best way to position DevRel teams? It isn't solely about reporting structure, although that's certainly a big part of it. Really it's about aligning philosophy, resource access, and cross-functional freedom.
Here are 4 pro-tips to position DevRel right:
Create dotted-line reporting
Educate upwards constantly
Position as cross-functional services
Executive reporting when possible
Most companies treat DevRel placement as an afterthought. Don't just dump DevRel somewhere and hope it works. The smart ones know this pigeonholes what it does, and limits its ROI. Smart companies are strategic about DevRel - both where they place the team within the organisation chart, and properly designing its boundaries and interactions with other teams.
Read the full article by Michiel Mulders: How to position DevRel within a tech company.
Anti-patterns
Most companies go about placing their DevRel teams the wrong way. They shove them under marketing, product, engineering, or sales without thinking it through. No mitigation strategies. No understanding of what breaks. Here's what actually happens:
Under Marketing:
DevRel gets forced into lead generation
Clash between technical engagement vs. campaigns
Metrics shift focus from educated developers to qualified leads
Under Product or Engineering:
Becomes a feature showcase machine
Neglects community building and education
Undervalues conferences, hackathons, and meetups
Under Sales:
Get stuck doing technical account management/ integrations engineering
DevRels become the "technical person" in sales calls
Focus shifts from reducing developer friction to CRM pipelines
Under the Executive Team:
Real autonomy to set priorities
Cross-functional collaboration at the right level
Higher strategic importance
This is the sweet spot... but this has downsides too:
Hard to find senior DevRel leaders with C-level experience
Proving ROI becomes trickier
Functions compete for DevRel resources
So think strategically about how to avoid these anti-patterns.
This is article 2 of 4 in the DevRel for Marketers series, by
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