Staff Developer Advocate

About Buildkite

Buildkite’s CI platform is trusted by the world’s leading engineering teams, shipping software to over 1,000,000,000 daily users.

Job Overview

We’re looking for a Staff DevRel to be the human interface to our strategy. Our technical educator, advocate and signal-capture engine earning trust in public, accelerates adoption and keeps Buildkite’s narrative anchored to reality.

We believe in devtools, DevRel is an execution system; education→proof→adoption→advocacy, run with credibility and discipline. You’ll help devs get to value faster, create moments that reinforce the cult of Buildkite and feed the org the hard truth about what’s confusing, what’s missing, and what we should ship next.

We’re only interested in candidates with genuine technical depth and strong public judgment. Someone who can teach, demo, debug and influence platform direction.

🚀 What You’ll Do

Ship a dev-first demand engine

• Own campaign execution across priority pillars, from concept→asset plan→launch→iteration
• Build programs that serve devs and buyers; credibility up top, clarity in the middle, conversion at the bottom
• Create a repeatable cadence that aligns our Labs (Brand Systems + Dev Voice + GTM) into

Be the technical advocate devs trust

• Show up in the right places with real, honest and technical insights and answers
• Teach CI concepts and Buildkite workflows in formats engineers respect
• Build credibility by engaging with reality

Accelerate adoption with education and practical pathways

• Design learning paths that reduce time-to-first-value: onboarding guides, implementation walkthroughs, etc
• Partner with Product/Support to turn recurring confusion into better docs, better defaults, and better UX
• Help teams migrate and modernise safely by demystifying CI and making it clear what good looks like
• Partner with customers (large, small and OSS) to share technical war stories and value-first storytelling, both for CI and for deeper orchestration

Turn proof into public artifacts

• Co-create with Content Engineering and Content Writing to turn technical reality into distributable proof
• Capture and publish dev-grade assets that answer real questions and survive scrutiny
• Maintain a high bar for public artifacts

Run signal capture for the whole org

• Collect what devs are asking, what objections repeat, what patterns emerge and route it to the right owners
• Make signal legible; categorise, quantify, and tell the truth clearly, even if it’s uncomfortable
• Close the loop; ensure signal turns into shipped fixes

Build durable advocacy and champion pathways

• Identify and nurture champions; power users, repeat contributors, future speakers
• Create pathways from curious→capable→confident→advocate, with the assets and moments needed at each step
• Partner with Dev Events to turn field moments into ongoing relationships and durable community pull

Run an OS that compounds

You’ll operate with a cadence that scales beyond any single person:

• Education loop; teach→observe confusion→update assets→improve onboarding
• Signal loop; capture→normalise→route→action
• Proof loop; identify gaps→co-build proof→validate→publish→reuse
• Adoption loop; guides/patterns→activation→support deflection→iteration
• Advocacy loop; champions→moments→contributions→amplification
• Coherence loop; align with Brand/GTM/Dev Voice→reduce drift

🎨What You Bring

This role only works with technical credibility and public judgment.

• You’ve shipped and operated real systems and can hold your own in CI/CD conversations
• Proven DevRel experience with evidence of impact
• Excellent technical communication
• You can design experiences that land, and you can recover when things break live
• You know what erodes trust and you protect credibility relentlessly
• You can run loops and build reusable assets
• You partner with Product, Eng, Support, Brand, and Sales while staying anchored to technical truth
• You can define success signals and report simply, clearly and regularly
• You document what you learn so the org compounds
• You see gaps, you ship fixes

Nice-to-haves

• Deep CI/CD or DevOps experience
• OSS contributions or public technical proof
• Experience supporting enterprise evaluation and migration motions
• Experience collaborating on events programming
• Comfort building agentic tooling / workflow automation to support DevRel systems

How We Work

• Autonomously, with agency; you'll join a small team of high-performing ICs, with the ability to drive and influence business impact from the start
• Async by default, with focused sync for decisions, pairing, and unblock moments
• We ship iteratively; small releases, tight feedback loops, measurable improvements
• We document and work in the open; decisions, risks, tradeoffs, fails, the lot
• We aim for craft and delight, but we don’t worship polish over progress

✨ Why Join Buildkite

At Buildkite, we value kindness, autonomy, and collaboration. You’ll be joining a remote-first company where your work directly helps some of the world’s best engineering teams build and ship software faster and more safely.

• Competitive compensation and benefits package
• Flexible, remote-first culture
• Meaningful technical challenges at scale
• Opportunities for professional growth, technical leadership, and cross-team influence
• A collaborative, inclusive, and innovative culture where your ideas make a real impact