Sr. Developer Relations Manager

Job description

# Sr. Developer Relations Manager **Backblaze — Remote, US** **Compensation: $172,000–$215,000 base + equity** ## About Backblaze Backblaze is the object storage layer for AI and data-intensive workloads, fueling customer success with cloud storage purpose-built for scalable performance and economics. We make customers unstoppable by solving their toughest storage challenges. Today we manage nearly 6 billion gigabytes of data for 500K+ customers across 175+ countries with fast growth among Neoclouds, GenAI companies, and companies reliant on data–heavy workloads. Developers are at the center of our next chapter, and we're serious about earning their trust. ## About the Role Developer relations is evolving quickly. Coding agents, informed by reference architectures and machine-readable documentation, are increasingly making integration decisions on behalf of developers. And trust, transparency, and human interaction are more important than ever as open source ideals and corporate agendas are weirdly attacked, limited, or promoted by unexpected sources and trends. Backblaze B2 Cloud storage was launched as a result of developer demand and has been committed to the developer ecosystem since day one. Today, we are seeking a leader who can help us become more present and trusted than ever before in this space, both as the storage default for agent-led projects and as a leading source of support, inspiration, and enablement for developers who need storage for whatever they’re building. As Sr. Developer Relations Manager, you'll work across a strong set of existing assets — a mature docs team, an engineering team focused on AI ecosystem integrations, our Flamethrower Startup Program, a content org, and an outward-facing SE team — and coordinate their outputs into a coherent, credible developer presence that earns mindshare where it matters most. This is a program-defining role for someone who thinks in systems, works backwards from adoption goals, knows how to make a company technically credible with developers who haven't heard of it yet, and is comfortable both channeling and being the face of developer relationships at Backblaze. ## What You'll Own **Developer Presence in the Agentic Stack** The primary goal of this role is to ensure Backblaze B2 is the best storage layer for developers and for their agents. That means understanding how AI coders discover and evaluate infrastructure tools today: through MCP servers, coding agent contexts, reference architectures, SDKs, and machine-readable documentation. You'll work with the internal AI team to define what "agent-ready" means for Backblaze and drive execution against it across engineering, docs, and content. **Cross-Functional Coordination** This role starts as an individual contributor, but you'll have real influence over a strong set of resources: an engineering team building integrations into AI tooling (MLFlow, ComfyUI, Hugging Face, popular agent frameworks), a docs team that can be directed toward structured, agent-consumable formats, a content org that can amplify what you build, and an SE team that can extend your enablement work, among a number of others at the company. Your job is to coordinate these teams around a unified developer strategy, keep that strategy moving, and share its outputs with the broader world. **Community and Ecosystem** Developers trust other developers. You'll underscore Backblaze's credibility in the communities where AI builders live: GitHub, Discord, open source projects, developer events, and the growing ecosystem of AI infrastructure tooling. You'll elevate internal technical voices, use their expertise to build your own thought leadership in the space, and partner with ecosystem players, and show up in a way that is earned, not marketed. Critically, you should have a presence in this community before coming to the role. **Developer Feedback Loop** You'll maintain a tight feedback loop from the developer community back to product and engineering — surfacing adoption friction, unmet integration needs, and emerging patterns worth prioritizing. The Flamethrower Startup Program gives you direct access to early-stage builders who can serve as signal-rich canaries for what's working and what isn't. **Metrics and Program Accountability** You'll define what success looks like — developer signups, activation rates, B2 adoption in AI frameworks, community engagement, content reach — and own progress against it. We're building this program to drive real revenue, and you'll be expected to connect the dots between awareness and conversion. Success in this role opens the door to bringing on, or from elsewhere in the company, developer resources to grow the program. ## What We're Looking For - Meaningful DevRel, developer marketing, or developer experience leadership at a cloud infrastructure, open source, or AI tooling company. You've built or significantly grown a developer program, not just contributed to one. - Understand how agentic workflows are reshaping how developers discover and integrate infrastructure tools — and you have opinions about what that means for DevRel strategy. - Technically credible. You can read a codebase, evaluate an SDK, write a working integration, and have a real conversation with an engineer about tradeoffs. You don't need to be a full-time SWE, but you need to have been one, or close to it. - Worked, or started, without a large team. You know how to amplify yourself through cross-functional relationships, external partners, and community rather than headcount. - Strong communicator — to developers externally and to leadership internally. You can write a crisp technical tutorial and a clear exec summary with equal ease. - Existing presence in developer communities. A following, conference talks, open source contributions, a technical blog — some signal that developers pay attention when you show up. **Strong plus:** - Direct experience with model training, data processing or generative media - Familiarity with how coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, etc.) surface and recommend infrastructure tools - Experience working with or building on top of open source frameworks in the AI/ML ecosystem (MLflow, DVC, Ray Data, WebDataset, and MosaicML Streaming) - Prior experience running or contributing to a startup/developer program (accelerator, cohort model, or similar) ## What You'll Have to Work With You won't be starting from scratch. You'll work closely with: - A mature, capable **docs team** that can be directed toward agent-consumable documentation formats and structured reference content - A strong **engineering team** dedicated to integrating Backblaze into the AI tooling ecosystem — building connectors, working on external integrations, and driving internal product improvements for developer use cases - **Flamethrower**, our startup program, which is already generating community energy and early-adopter signal among AI builders - An outward-facing **solutions engineering team** that can extend your enablement work with hands-on technical support - A **content org** that can help produce and amplify developer-facing assets - Active strategic work from **Rawkode Academy** laying the DevRel foundation: audit, persona validation, content models, and engagement strategy ## Why This Matters Now Developers are making storage decisions earlier in the stack than ever before — often before they've spoken to a salesperson, often through a coding agent recommending a reference architecture. Backblaze has the right product, the right price point, and a growing engineering investment behind this motion. What we need is the person who can translate that into developer conviction at scale. The window to establish Backblaze as the default AI storage layer is open now. This role exists to make sure we don't miss it. ## Backblaze Perks - Healthcare for family, including dental and vision - Competitive compensation and 401K - RSU grants for full-time employees - ESPP program - Flexible vacation policy - Maternity & paternity leave - MacBook Pro plus a generous workstation stipend - Childcare bonus - Fertility treatment and support - Learning & development program - Commuter benefits - Culture that supports a healthy work-life balance ## **Pay Transparency** To provide greater transparency to candidates, we share base pay ranges for all US-based job postings regardless of state. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate location, skills, depth of work experience, and relevant licenses/credentials. The expected salary range for this role is $172,000 - $215,000 plus 20% target annual bonus and RSUs. At Backblaze, we value being fair and good to our customers, partners, and employees. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the core of our values. We are committed to fostering a workforce where all employees feel a sense of belonging regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, socio-economic status, ability, veteran status, and education. We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. *Backblaze is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to fostering a workforce where all employees feel a sense of belonging regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, socio-economic status, ability, veteran status, and education.*