Director, Developer Community

ROLE SUMMARY

We are seeking an experienced Engineering Management leader to build and lead high-performing engineering teams. In this role, you will drive team effectiveness and career development while ensuring organizational outcomes are achieved. You will create space for innovation and model the ownership behaviors that define our engineering culture.

In this developer experience role, you will build and nurture thriving internal and external developer communities. You will create forums for knowledge exchange, run internal conferences and hackathons, champion open-source contributions, and ensure engineers feel connected across organizational boundaries. You will be the voice of the developer community to leadership and the voice of leadership to the community.

This role encompasses business unit community strategy and developer engagement. You will define strategic direction for developer relations, shape community practices across the business unit, and maintain external visibility through conferences, publications, and industry partnerships. You will handle business unit complexity creating clarity from ambiguity around developer engagement and cultural cohesion.

ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES

• Business: Shape technology-driven community strategy, represent developer engagement at executive level, and own strategic outcomes around engineering culture and retention

• Data: Shape community engagement data strategy across the business unit, lead data-driven community programme design, and represent developer sentiment insights at executive level

• People: Develop senior leaders, shape talent strategy across the business unit, build high-performing teams, and own succession planning

• Documentation: Shape community knowledge strategy across the business unit, enable broad knowledge sharing through community channels, and own community content governance

• Artificial Intelligence: Drive AI adoption for community platforms and developer enablement, establish AI governance guidelines for community tooling, and own cross-team AI-assisted knowledge discovery decisions

• Process: Establish community and engagement processes across teams in your area, lead change initiatives in developer culture, own cross-team community coordination, and drive continuous improvement

• Reliability: Own team reliability outcomes, manage incident response rotations, staff reliability initiatives, and champion operational excellence

• Delivery: Coordinate team delivery by managing dependencies, removing blockers, and keeping stakeholders informed

ROLE BEHAVIOURS

• Communicate with Precision: Shapes industry standards for technical communication; recognized authority on spec-driven AI development; influences organizational communication culture; publishes on precision in the AI era; keynotes at industry conferences

• Think in Systems: Defines organizational systems architecture principles; recognized industry authority on complex systems; advises executive leadership on systemic risks and opportunities; publishes thought leadership on systems thinking in technology organizations

• Don't Lose Your Curiosity: Drives team curiosity through challenging questions; creates environments where exploration and experimentation are encouraged; models problem discovery orientation; seeks out ambiguity rather than avoiding it

• Own the Outcome: Drives accountability culture focused on outcomes not deliverables; owns business relationships and impact metrics across their function; makes trade-offs between custom solutions and generalizable work; there is no "I must run this by X"; ensures verification rigor for AI-generated code

• Be Polymath Oriented: Bridges gaps between engineering, design, business, and science; rapidly immerses in new domains; speaks the language of Commercial, Manufacturing, or R&D; makes better decisions by understanding broader context

EXPERT-LEVEL SKILLS

• Developer Experience: You shape developer community strategy across the business unit. You create innovative approaches to internal developer engagement, are recognized for building high-participation community programmes, and influence industry practices on developer relations and advocacy.

• Knowledge Management: You shape enterprise knowledge strategy through community-driven learning. You drive learning organization culture, create community frameworks that others adopt, and are recognized for building organizations where knowledge flows freely across boundaries.

• Multi-Audience Communication: You shape communication practices across the business unit. You represent engineering externally at conferences and in publications, communicate at board and executive level on developer culture, and are recognized as an exceptional communicator who bridges any audience gap.

• Pattern Generalization: You shape the discovery-to-scale pipeline for community best practices across the business unit. You define the organizational approach to scaling community-discovered patterns, balance enterprise-wide programmes with grassroots initiatives, and are recognized for turning local innovations into adopted practices.

• Stakeholder Management: You shape stakeholder practices across the business unit. You manage executive relationships around developer engagement and culture, represent engineering community outcomes at the highest levels, and are recognized for exceptional stakeholder partnerships.

• Team Collaboration: You create collaborative culture across the business unit. You transform dysfunctional team dynamics through community building, are recognized for creating exceptional cross-team connections, and mentor others on collaboration excellence.

• Technical Writing: You shape community content culture and standards across the business unit. You innovate on developer blog, conference talk, and documentation approaches, are recognized for exceptional clarity in community communications, and lead community publishing initiatives.

• Data Analysis: You shape community engagement analytics culture and strategy across the business unit. You introduce innovative analytical approaches to measuring developer sentiment and participation, solve the most complex engagement measurement challenges, and are recognized as a community analytics authority.

PRACTITIONER-LEVEL SKILLS

• AI Literacy: You lead AI adoption decisions for community platforms and knowledge discovery across teams in your area. You assess AI tools and vendors for community engagement systematically, train engineers on AI-assisted knowledge sharing, and establish guidelines for appropriate AI use in community contexts.

• Business Immersion: You immerse in operations until you think like an insider. You rapidly acquire domain expertise through direct observation and community engagement, translate between business and engineering needs seamlessly, and mentor engineers in your area on immersion.

• Lean Thinking & Flow: You lead lean transformations in community programmes and engagement processes across teams in your area, design flow-optimized community operations, coach on lean principles, and balance programme breadth with depth. You establish metrics that drive improvement.

• Time Management & Deep Work: You optimize personal and team productivity, coach engineers on time management and deep work practices, and create environments that protect focus time while meeting community and business needs.

QUALIFICATIONS

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field with 10+ years of relevant experience. Deep technical expertise with a proven track record in developer advocacy, community building at scale, and organization-wide engineering culture leadership.

Work Location Assignment: Hybrid