Sr. Manager of Developer Relations Engineering

Why this role matters:

We are seeking an experienced leader to build and guide our Developer Relations Engineering team. This is a critical role within the Vonage Developer Ecosystem and Engagement team responsible for how we engage and grow the developer community and drive adoption of our API products.

You will play a pivotal role in establishing the technical foundation for developer success: leading a team that creates code samples, SDKs, demos, tutorials, workshops, and technical integrations that help developers and ecosystem partners adopt and succeed with Vonage APIs. This is a high-visibility role that requires technical depth, strategic thinking, and strong leadership skills to influence both internal product direction and external developer adoption.

As a player-coach, you will not only manage the team but also serve as a key voice for the developer community within the company, partnering closely with API product teams and other key stakeholders, ensuring developer needs and feedback directly influence our product roadmap. If you are a technical leader with a passion for building developer communities and creating impactful solutions, this is the role for you.

Your key responsibilities:

• Lead and Inspire: Recruit, mentor, and lead a high-performing team of Developer Relation Engineers, fostering a collaborative, inclusive, and innovative culture.
• Define the Strategy: Develop and own the team's strategy and roadmap, defining the key initiatives that will improve the developer journey, from initial onboarding to advanced application development.
• Drive Technical Excellence: Oversee the design and development of high-impact technical artifacts, including large-scale demos, public-facing tools (CLIs, SDKs), and reference architectures that showcase the power and versatility of our products.
• Champion Content and Community: Guide the team in transforming their engineering work into compelling technical content, such as in-depth tutorials, blog posts, and conference presentations, to educate and grow our developer community.
• Be the Developer's Advocate: Act as an important bridge between the external developer community and our internal Product and Engineering teams. Systematically gather, synthesize, and relay developer feedback to drive meaningful product improvements.
• Build for AI-Assisted Development: Create a seamless developer experience for AI-assisted coding, model integration, agentic AI workflows, and intelligent automation, with best practices, examples, and documentation that enable developers to use AI effectively.
• Prioritize for Impact: Manage the team's backlog and prioritize projects using a data-informed framework to ensure we are always focused on the most valuable initiatives for the developer community and the business.
• Measure Success: Define, track, and report on the team's Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), demonstrating the impact of our developer engagement efforts.
• Collaborate Across Functions: Build strong partnerships with leaders in Product, Engineering, and Marketing, as well as the other Developer Relations leaders to ensure a cohesive and world-class developer experience.

What you’ll bring:

Required:

• Strong software engineering background and have built and shipped production-grade applications.
• Experience building developer tools, CLIs, SDKs, or other productivity-enhancing automations.
• A history of creating high-impact technical content (blogs, videos) and speaking at developer conferences or meetups.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Working knowledge in two or more languages, such as NodeJS, PHP, Python, Java, Ruby, or .NET
• 8+ years of proven experience in a leadership role, managing and scaling technical teams (minimum team size of 10) focused on developer experience, developer relations, or platform engineering.
• Deep understanding of developer communities and a passion for engaging with developers, understanding their pain points, and advocating for their needs.

What we consider a plus:

• Contributions to open-source projects.
• Thinking strategically to set a long-term vision while also managing day-to-day execution and prioritizing tasks effectively to align with company goals.
• Leading with empathy and using data to inform your decisions, from prioritizing projects to measuring team impact.

Where you will work:

This position offers a remote work arrangement based in the Eastern Time Zone of the United States. Occasional travel domestically and internationally up to 20% of the time is required. 

Sponsorship is not available. Legal authorization to work in the USA is required. We are unable to sponsor individuals for employment visas, now or in the future, for this job opening. #LI-HB