Senior Manager, Developer Advocacy

An overview of this role

As Senior Manager, Developer Advocacy, you will inspire and enable every developer to be more productive with GitLab. Your work sits at the intersection of technical excellence and community impact — creating compelling content that demonstrates GitLab's value while gathering key insights from customer engagement to shape our strategy and direction. 

This role uniquely combines team leadership and hands-on technical advocacy with strategic thinking. You will lead a team of experienced Developer Advocates who drive GitLab’s technical content and community engagement. You will lead your team by example, crafting demos, tutorials and blog posts that put our users at the center and show them how GitLab can help them achieve their goals. You will code alongside developers and engage directly with our community — all while identifying patterns in developer needs that inform GitLab's roadmap. You will work cross-functionally with teams in R&D, Marketing, and Sales to influence product and GTM strategy based on your deep understanding of our users. 

Your dual mission to drive adoption through technical content and deepen community engagement makes you a critical bridge for ensuring that user feedback is a fundamental component of our product strategy and roadmap. Reporting to the Director of Developer Advocacy, you'll have the autonomy to shape how millions of developers experience modern DevSecOps, with particular focus on emerging technologies like AI coding assistants that are transforming software development.

Some of our recent work includes:

• GitLab Duo Agent Platform public beta announcement: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/gitlab-duo-agent-platform-public-beta/
• A comprehensive guide to GitLab DAST: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/comprehensive-guide-to-gitlab-dast/ 
• MCP product tour: https://gitlab.navattic.com/mcp 
• A day in the life of a developer with GitLab Duo Agent Platform: https://youtu.be/mun7sW93dOM 
• The Developer Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFD0w8DfA4g 

What You’ll Do  

• Lead and develop a team of Developer Advocates, providing coaching, guidance, and fostering their growth
• Coordinate team efforts across content, engagement, and cross-functional work to maximize impact
• Create technical content that drives adoption — from hands-on tutorials and demo applications to conference talks that showcase GitLab's DevSecOps capabilities
• Engage directly with developers, from individual contributors to enterprise teams, to understand their workflows and challenges
• Synthesize community feedback into actionable insights for Product and Engineering teams, ensuring GitLab evolves with developer needs
• Build and maintain demo environments that showcase GitLab's platform capabilities, particularly in areas like CI/CD, security scanning, and AI-powered development
• Collaborate with customers, providing technical guidance and gathering real-world use cases
• Measure and report on advocacy impact, using data to refine strategies and demonstrate value to stakeholders

What You’ll Bring 

• 4+ years leading a developer advocacy team or 7+ years in developer advocacy, developer relations, or technical evangelism roles
• Deep understanding of DevOps practices and modern software development workflows
• Hands-on experience with Git workflows and collaborative development practices
• Knowledge of AI coding assistants and their integration into development workflows
• Proven track record creating technical content that resonates with developer audiences (blogs, videos, workshops)
• Strong coding skills with the ability to build meaningful demos and contribute to open source projects
• Experience gathering and synthesizing technical feedback from diverse user communities
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to adapt tone for different audiences
• Data-driven mindset with experience measuring content and program effectiveness
• Ability to work autonomously in a remote, asynchronous environment

About the team

The Developer Advocacy team at GitLab is a globally distributed team that drives adoption through content creation, customer and community engagement, and influencing company strategy to align with user needs. We believe the best advocacy comes from genuine enthusiasm about solving developer challenges. Our team creates the content developers search for, delivers the talks they remember, and builds the relationships that transform skeptics into champions. We work closely with Product, Engineering, and Marketing teams to ensure GitLab remains the platform developers choose when they want to ship better software faster. Learn more in our handbook.