About Buffer
We create social media and brand-building software for small businesses, creators, and individuals. Our mission is to provide essential tools to help small businesses get off the ground and grow. Through exceptional customer service and uplifting content, we help our customers believe they can succeed and do good along the way.
Buffer is a fully distributed team, and we’ve always aimed to do things a little differently at Buffer. Since the early days, we’ve focused on building one of the most unique and fulfilling workplaces by rethinking a lot of traditional practices. We also default to transparency, so you can read all about our metrics, and our successes and failures along the way on our Transparency Dashboard.
We're united by Buffer's values, and we hire and work from all over the world. We strive to create a diverse and inclusive work environment, and we are building a culture where underrepresented groups are welcome and can flourish. Please note that we do travel to work together in person once or twice per year, and those events are highly encouraged to build deeper connections among our small team.
As you get to know Buffer and consider joining the journey, feel free to read more from Kirsti and Sabreen as they share their first experiences with Buffer, as well as from Hailley, who captured why she still calls Buffer home after 8+ years.
About the role
The Senior Developer Advocate role will sit within the Engineering team and work cross-functionally across multiple areas (Engineering, Advocacy, and Marketing) at Buffer. This person will connect deeply with external developers, support our internal teams with technical expertise, and help shape how our API is understood, adopted, and extended. This is an exciting opportunity to own and shape Buffer’s developer experience from the ground up in a new area of the business: building a strong developer community and ecosystem around our evolving API and platform, where your work directly influences the product roadmap, customer outcomes, and the future of our growing ecosystem.
What you'll do
- Own escalated support tickets for API-specific questions and serve as a technical liaison for our customer support team for questions that sit within this domain.
- Build and nurture our developer community, including leading engagement with that audience on our Discord server and participating in relevant external developer channels.
- Create and publish educational and promotional content such as blog posts, social media threads, technical walkthroughs, and webinars.
- Represent Buffer at conferences and industry events, presenting talks, demos, and case studies.
- Continuously iterate on and improve developer documentation, working closely with engineering to enhance our overall developer experience.
- Build proof of concepts for how third-party developers can integrate with or extend Buffer’s public API.
- Identify partnership and co-marketing opportunities with other developer ecosystems and, when relevant, prototype or build integrations on external platforms.
- Shape the API roadmap by sharing key insights with our engineering team.
Helpful skills and experience
- A software engineer who has transitioned into developer relations or developer advocacy. You've been doing developer relations or developer advocacy already for a number of years.
- Someone with deep API experience, who's comfortable writing technical content, building prototypes, and debugging API workflows.
- A natural communicator who can make complex topics approachable through writing, video, and live presentations.
- A connector who enjoys engaging with online developer communities and can authentically represent Buffer’s culture and values.
- Comfortable operating cross-functionally across engineering, marketing, and support.
- Proactive in identifying opportunities to expand Buffer’s footprint within the broader developer ecosystem.
- Self-driven, empathetic, and committed to creating a welcoming environment for all developers engaging with our tools.
- Previous experience in customer support or service roles, with a strong track record of advocating for customers and resolving complex issues with care and clarity. You have a deep commitment to customer experience and a high degree of empathy for the end-to-end user journey, consistently looking for ways to reduce friction and improve every touchpoint.
- You have project management strength. You can lead teams to ship MVPs, get early data and feedback, and make customer-centric decisions
- You have a creator mindset. You have a personal connection to content creation, social media, or creator tools. It's a big plus if you used Buffer before and care about the experience
- You communicate exceptionally well in writing. You have strong written communication skills for distributed collaboration
- You have a growth mindset. You are humble, comfortable with ambiguity, and committed to continuous learning
Our tech stack
Our engineering team works across the full stack in a single monorepo.
Frontend
- React and TypeScript
- Internal design system (Popcorn) built on top of Radix UI with CSS modules and Storybook
- Vite for build tooling
- Jest and React Testing Library for testing
- Playwright for E2E tests
Backend
- Node.js and TypeScript
- GraphQL (migrating away from REST)
- MongoDB as our main database
- Microservices architecture (consolidating into monorepo)
- We also have a legacy PHP backend that we are slowly migrating over to the monorepo
Infrastructure
- AWS with Kubernetes
- Feature flags for gradual rollouts
- Datadog for monitoring and observability
AI/ML
- Integration with various LLM providers
- Building internal abstractions for AI features
As a Senior Developer Advocate, you don't need to be actively coding every day, but you should be comfortable engaging in technical discussions, understanding architectural decisions, and occasionally diving into code to build prototypes or integrations to unblock or guide external developers or teammates.
Interview process
Here's what our hiring process for this role is like.
- Application. When submitting your application and resume, tell us why you want to join Buffer and take your time. This is your chance to make a strong first impression.
- Hiring manager interview. Chat with Amanda, Staff Product Manager, and Raf, Engineering Manager, to understand what it takes to work at Buffer. This is an opportunity for both sides to get to know each other and determine whether our expectations align.
- Asynchronous assignment. We'll send you 60-minute asynchronous assignment to help us understand how you think about technical details, feedback, and communication.
- Team interview with Engineering and Advocacy Team. Interview with an engineer and advocate focused on technical skills and your developer advocacy experience and approach.
- Interview with Senior Leadership. At this stage, you’ll have a chance to discuss your experience and ambitions for a future role at Buffer with our Director of Engineering, Mike, and our VP of Customer Advocacy, Åsa. This is a great chance for you to gain a deeper understanding of Buffer's strategy and work processes.
- Interview with Chief of Staff and CEO. Our final interview with Caro, our Chief of Staff and Joel, our CEO.
- Collaboration period. This is an experimental stage for us where you would work with us over a few days (fully paid). The goal is to see how it feels to work in the team, both for us and for you. You'll meet a few bufferoos, and invite you to a Slack where you'll collaborate with the team.
- Offer. We wrap it up with an offer and discuss the final details. We would align on the last bits before we make you part of the Buffer team 💛
At Buffer, we value diversity of experience, and we understand that comes in many forms. We’re dedicated to adding new perspectives to the team. So, if your experience is close to what we’re looking for, please consider applying.
By submitting the application, you consent to Buffer collecting and processing your personal data for recruiting purposes, find more details in our Privacy Policy.
