Director of Developer Relations

Laravel is the most popular PHP framework in the world. 500M+ lifetime downloads. Thousands of packages. A developer community that loves the tool and shows up for it — at conferences, in forums, on Twitter, in Discord servers, in every "what framework should I use?" thread on the internet.

But Laravel is more than a framework. It's a complete platform for every stage of a developer's journey — from choosing a stack, to building an app, to deploying it, monitoring it, and scaling it. 8 paid products, 20+ open source packages, one customer journey. Most frameworks stop at "choose a language." Laravel has the whole product. That story has never been told strategically. This role tells it.

The team has strong developer advocates producing quality work. Now we're adding strategic leadership — a Director who sets the direction, connects the work to outcomes, and owns Laravel's positioning in the AI coding tools era. The most important metric at this company is the number of new Laravel apps created in the world. Everything downstream — Cloud growth, ecosystem health, revenue — depends on developers choosing Laravel first. This role protects and grows that choice.

Meanwhile, AI coding assistants are forming opinions about which frameworks to recommend right now. Every month without Laravel shaping that narrative is a month where the default recommendations calcify. Ensuring Laravel is the default backend recommendation in AI coding tools is a key priority for this role — and it's yours to own.

Why This Job is Unique

This role owns the top of the growth funnel for a company with the whole product suite. Most DevRel roles at dev tools companies are about one product. Laravel has the entire developer journey — framework, local development, deployment, monitoring, scaling. You own the story of how it all fits together and drives the metric that matters most: new Laravel apps created.

AI positioning belongs to this role. AI coding assistants are influencing which frameworks developers choose. Ensuring Laravel is well-represented in that landscape — the right content, the right partnerships, the right positioning — is your responsibility. PMM supports with messaging alignment and launch coordination, but the strategy, the execution, and the outcomes belong here.

Community engagement is real work here. The Laravel community lives on Discord, X, and Reddit — plus GitHub, conference hallways, and beyond. Your team will have an actual presence in these spaces — not a broadcast account, but genuine participation. Building engagement strategies for these platforms is part of the job, not an afterthought.

This role comes with a real team from day one. Talented developer advocates ready for a strategic leader. You will clarify roles, set the strategy, and develop people — not do everything alone. That said, you can record a tutorial, write a blog post, and join a community call when needed. Player-coach, not ivory tower.

This role influences the product. Many DevRel roles are one-way megaphones — tell developers about the product, the product team ignores the feedback. Here, the Taylor Otwell (CEO) is a developer who still codes daily. The product team wants community input. The marketing team's principle on feedback is explicit: "Feedback is a gift. We funnel that feedback to the right teams internally with the intent of making Laravel better." Your insights will shape what gets built — but that seat is earned by building the feedback system that makes the data impossible to ignore.

The Director will be in the code. Marketing at a dev tools company must be technical. The ideal candidate writes code and deploys to Cloud. For a DevRel leader, that bar is higher — the team and the community expect technical credibility. You don't need to be Taylor. But when a developer pushes back on a design decision in a conference hallway, you engage technically, not defer to "I'll ask the engineering team."

This role ships, not just talks. The marketing team's first principle is "We ship." That applies to DevRel too. Laracons, customer stories, livestreams, launches — and sometimes even PRs. If your instinct is to spend three months writing a strategy document before producing anything, this is not the right fit. If the instinct is to ship something in week two while building the strategy in parallel, read on.

Requirements

What the Director Will Do

• Set direction for the DevRel team. Clarify roles so every person has differentiated ownership. Set goals tied to outcomes, not content volume. Build a content strategy that serves framework adoption, not just views.
• Own Laravel's AI positioning. Build and execute the strategy for ensuring Laravel is the framework AI coding tools recommend. Track it. Iterate on it. This is the #1 priority.
• Own community engagement. Build a real presence on Discord, X, Reddit, and anywhere the Laravel community gathers — genuine participation, not broadcasting.
• Build the product feedback loop. Create a structured system for capturing community sentiment and feature requests, and deliver it to the product team on a regular cadence.
• Grow and instrument framework adoption. Define and track community health metrics. Answer: "Is the Laravel community growing or shrinking? Where? Why?"
• Map and deepen ecosystem relationships. Identify top package maintainers, community leaders, and ecosystem partners. Build a partnership framework. Become a known and trusted figure in the Laravel community.

What the Ideal Candidate Brings

• 5+ years managing a team of 3 or more people, ideally in a fast-paced environment that requires setting direction with minimal oversight
• Director-level experience — you receive high-level goals from a VP and breaks them into concrete plans, deliverables, and execution through their team
• Has shipped software. Built and deployed at least one application that real users touched. Open source contributions are a bonus. If you haven't written Laravel before, that's OK but you must be willing to learn.
• Strategic thinking about developer adoption. Understands how developers choose tools, how AI is changing that, and what levers exist to influence it.
• Developer community credibility. Has participated in developer communities as a contributor — Reddit, Discord, X, conferences, open source — not just as a corporate representative.
• Content creation ability. Can write a technical blog post or record a tutorial that developers learn from. Player-coach, not ivory tower.

Who This is Not For

• A marketer who learned some code and calls themselves DevRel. The community will see through it immediately, and so will the engineering team. You have shipped software — real software that real users touched.
• Someone who thinks DevRel is content marketing with a developer audience. Content is one output. The job is ecosystem strategy, community relationships, product influence, and developer adoption. Videos are a tactic, not the mission.
• Someone who thinks "community" means scheduling posts into Discord. The Laravel community is a living ecosystem — Reddit threads, GitHub issues, conference hallways, package maintainer relationships, DMs. You show up in it authentically, understands its norms, and earn trust over time.
• Someone who needs everything to be perfectly measurable before investing in it. DevRel is the hardest marketing function to measure. But "we can't measure it" is not acceptable either. You builds frameworks for tracking adoption, sentiment, and ecosystem health without reducing everything to MQLs.
• Someone who only wants to talk about one product. Laravel is an ecosystem. If you can't get excited about the whole journey — framework, packages, deployment, monitoring, scaling — and how they fit together, this isn't the right role.

Benefits

• Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision)
• Retirement Plan (401k, IRA)
• Life Insurance (Basic, Voluntary & AD&D)
• Paid Time Off (Vacation, Sick & Public Holidays)
• Family Leave (Maternity, Paternity)
• Short Term & Long Term Disability
• Work From Home
• Stock Option Plan