Developer Advocate

Job description

ABOUT EXA We raised a $250M Series C to build the search engine for AIs. Led by a16z, with existing investors Benchmark, Lightspeed, and YC doubling down, the round brings Exa's valuation to $2.2 billion. Exa is building a search engine for the AI era. Our Search API currently powers Agents, Fortune 500s and AI labs as we transform an industry that hasn't been disrupted since the 90s. We're a largely SF-based team of ~100 from Harvard, MIT, Meta, Google Research, ex-founders & dropouts alike. We are rapidly building the most intelligent search engine in history. We're high agency, low-ego, and united by the feeling that this is one of the last problems worth getting right. We are looking for a Developer Advocate who builds real things with our API and can make other developers want to build them too. ABOUT THE ROLE This is an engineer's job with an audience. You'll spend your time building: reference apps, demos, integrations, and the small sharp examples that make a developer understand in thirty seconds what Exa unlocks for their agent. Then you'll show how it works, in talks, streams, workshops, repos, and wherever developers gather. You should already be building with LLMs, agents, and retrieval, and you should be able to talk to a staff engineer about where their pipeline is failing without hedging. Communication is the other key. We need someone who does both building and presenting, with good taste for production values both on stage and in videos. You'll work closely with the Head of DevRel on community and ecosystem programs, and with Technical PMM on repurposing what you build into content for SEO and AEO. This role is in-person, at either our San Francisco HQ or in New York office. WHAT YOU'LL OWN DEMOS AND REFERENCE APPLICATIONS Own a growing library of working code that shows Exa at its best: reference agents, integration examples, and demos built for specific developer use cases. Success is measured by usage, forks, and whether developers cite them as the reason they got started. TECHNICAL TALKS AND WORKSHOPS Be a teacher, both in-person and on video. Represent Exa at conference talks, meetups, workshops, hackathons, and streams. Success is measured by quality of delivery and by developers who start building after seeing you. COMMUNITY PRESENCE AND SUPPORT Be genuinely useful in public forums: answering questions, unblocking developers, participating in the communities where our users are, and being a recognizable helpful presence rather than a promotional astroturfer. Success is measured by response quality and audience trust. INTEGRATION WORK Build and maintain integrations with the frameworks and tools developers use, in partnership with the Head of DevRel who owns the partner relationships. Success is measured by integrations that stay working as upstream changes. DEVELOPER FEEDBACK Carry friction back to Product and Engineering with the specificity only a builder can provide: what broke, where you got stuck, and what a new developer would abandon. Success is measured by fixes shipped because you reported them well. WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE - A steady stream of working demos that developers actually clone and run. - Talks and workshops that convert attention into first API calls. - Developers recognize you as helpful in the communities that matter to us. - Integrations we own stay healthy, not abandoned after launch. - Product hears about developer friction from you before it shows up in churn. - Marketing and sales pull your demos into their material because they are the clearest thing we have. WHAT THIS ROLE DOES NOT OWN - Community strategy, ecosystem partnerships, and DevRel program direction: Head of Developer Relations. - Blog strategy and organic discovery: Technical PMM for Content. - Product roadmap and API design: Product and Engineering. - Press, social channels, and executive speaking: Communications. - Paid channels, website, and funnel mechanics: Digital Marketing. WHO YOU ARE - 3+ years as a software engineer, developer advocate, or a mix, with code you can show us. - Real fluency in the AI stack. You have built with LLMs, agents, and retrieval, and you can speak about what worked and what didn't. - Public artifacts: repos, talks, streams, tutorials, or side projects. We care more about what you've shipped and shown than where you worked. - Strong live communication. You can teach something technical to a room and hold their attention. - Genuine enthusiasm for helping other developers, including the unglamorous version of that in a support thread at 9pm. - Comfort working in public and taking technical criticism without getting defensive. - AI-native working habits: you build with AI tooling daily and have opinions about where it falls short. NICE TO HAVE - Open source contributions developers would recognize. - Experience at an API-first or developer tools company. - A following or reputation in the AI developer community. - Experience running workshops or hackathon mentoring. - Range beyond code: video, writing, or design skills that make your demos land harder. BENEFITS - Health and wellness: Premium medical, dental, and vision coverage, plus a monthly wellness benefit and a monthly commuter benefit for our SF team. - Fertility and family planning: Reimbursement for eligible egg freezing and related medical expenses up to a $15,000 lifetime maximum, plus 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for all new parents, whether through birth, adoption, surrogacy, or foster placement. - Life at Exa: Lunch and dinner served daily, an office stocked with snacks, coffee, and health supplements, fresh bread from a local bakery every morning, weekly milk tea deliveries, monthly picnics, and parties to celebrate the wins (and each other). - Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas for exceptional candidates and welcome applicants from all backgrounds and locations. Exa is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, creed, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability, age, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related conditions, criminal histories consistent with applicable law, or any other basis protected by applicable law.