Developer Relations Lead

Job Description

Job Description

Building data-driven AI applications and agents is too complex, even for advanced developers.

This new generation of applications need fast, secure access to data across disparate systems, the ability to search and reason over that data, and infrastructure that’s reliable enough to run in production. Today, teams often need to piece together query engines, search systems, caches, and AI tooling, adding significant complexity along the way.

At Spice AI, we simplify this by unifying query federation, search, and AI into a single runtime for building intelligent applications. Our mission is to make building AI-powered software as easy building a modern web application and help developers build the next generation of applications. We offer both open source and fully managed cloud deployments.

For a deeper dive into the vision, watch Founder and CEO Luke Kim's CMU Databases talk on Spice.ai OSS at -ec1lKfU and read his Materialized View interview at -a-cdn-for-databases-spice-ai.

At Spice AI, we hire for MEI: Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence. We're looking for exceptional, ambitious builders who are driven to solve hard problems and push the boundaries of what's possible for AI.

The Developer Relations Lead at Spice AI will be a key technical advocate for Spice.ai OSS and the Spice.ai data and AI platform. You will enjoy being one of the public technical faces of Spice AI, responsible for leading and executing developer relations and product marketing.

As the first DevRel hire, you will be creating and sharing meaningful content, like for the Spice.ai data and AI compute-engine, including samples and tutorials, documentation, or even core pull-requests when required. You'll directly engage with developers through social media, blogs, and at events, providing insights and support, and collecting feedback that you'll use to directly influence what we build. Your work will directly contribute to building a supportive and collaborative developer community around Spice AI and technologies we use like Apache Arrow, DataFusion, Iceberg, and DuckDB. 

You've done this before. Your participation in relevant projects will have previously earned you the respect of open-source and engineering communities. You have published excellent written content, marketing materials, and documentation.

Along with oustanding communication, marketing, and written skills, this role requires a solid technical background, especially in data and ML, and a genuine passion for helping other developers succeed.

You new opportunity

• Be one of the technical faces of Spice AI.
• Work side-by-side with the CEO to develop, lead, and execute on all areas of Spice AI's DevRel and Developer Marketing strategy.
• Build and grow an engaged technical community with industry-leading technical content including documentation, blogs, and thought leadership articles.
• Develop and maintain sample applications and demos to showcase Spice AI capabilities.
• Participate actively in developer forums, events, and conferences.
• Own Spice AI's open-source blog and documentation.

This role may be a great fit if

• You are a proven, hands-on technical thought leader.
• You have and enjoy building a developer audience in open-source and social communities.
• You enjoy the process of writing and crafting high-quality written content.
• You are a creative problem solver and approach solutions from different angles, focusing on possibility, rather than limitations.
• When faced with ambiguity, you are a guiding north star and provide clarity to the team.
• You are passionate about high performance and have high standards.

This experience is ideal

• 4-6 years of proven experience in developer relations, advocacy, product marketing, or a similar role.
• A track record of excellent marketing and communication decisions.
• Excellent communication and writing skills, comfortable with deep technical writing and conference presentations, with a talent for distilling complex technical concepts into clear, accessible language.
• Experience managing social media platforms and creating engaging digital content.
• Leadership skills with the ability to inspire and grow a technical community.
• Experience in startups, open-source projects, AI/ML, data platforms, and distributed systems.

Your first 90-days

• Days 0-30: Learn and use Spice.ai OSS and the Spice.ai data and AI platform, building at least one end-to-end demo and contributing written pieces to newsletters, blog.spice.ai, blog.spiceai.org, and X/LinkedIn.
• Days 31-60: Work with the CEO to develop Spice AI's DevRel and Product Marketing strategy for 2025.
• Days 61-90: Take ownership of the execution and success of DevRel, Developer Marketing, and associated assets and channels.

Spice AI offers competitive startup equity in addition to base salary. Equity range for this role 0.1%-0.5%.

This is a hands-on role. Expect to join the all team, including the CEO, in building, developing, and marketing the platform.

About Spice AI

Founded in June 2021 by Microsoft and GitHub alumni Luke Kim and Phillip LeBlanc, Spice AI creates technology to help developers build intelligent applications and agents that learn and adapt.

Before co-founding Spice AI, Luke was the co-creator of Azure Incubations in the Office of the Azure CTO, where he led cross-functional engineering teams to create and develop technologies including Dapr and OAM.

Spice AI is backed by some of the top industry angel investors and leaders, including Nat Friedman, Mark Russinovich, CTO of Microsoft Azure, and Thomas Dohmke, CEO of GitHub, who is also on the board.

Spice AI also has notable VC backing from Madrona Venture Group, Basis Set Ventures, Founders' Co-op, and Picus Capital.

Learn more:

- On TechCrunch and GeekWire

- About the team at spice.ai/careers

- The Spice.ai general availability announcement blog post

- The Spice.ai OSS project announcement blog post

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.