I'm Looking for a Role in Technical Partnerships Leading to Revenue Growth Within a Developer Product Startup

As I began thinking about the next journey in my career, I couldn't help but think about this seemingly normal day many years ago. I was eating lunch outside with a few coworkers after two of us had finished an in-person sales meeting with a client our company really wanted to land. The meeting went really well. We're talking the best way it could have gone—verbal yes' all around with invitations to additional lucrative opportunities alongside their company. It was a slam dunk.

So naturally, at lunch, our team was celebrating our success. As others were chatting, I remember drifting off and thinking about how much fun that meeting was. I got to sit down with the technical team and walk them through all the things I loved about my company's product and how it could save them time. I understood their pain points, because I had been there before. I could predict what would come next on their list of complaints and needs, which meant I really knew my stuff and therefore, was trustworthy. In that moment, I felt valuable. I was serving my company, but even more so, I was serving developers by providing insights into ways to make their lives easier. It wasn't selling, it was empowering.

At this time, my role within that company was a Developer Advocate. If you're familiar with Developer Relations, you might be wondering how I ended up in a sales meeting. At this company, I did what I think is the truest form of developer relations, I came alongside other developers and helped them succeed with my company's product. I didn't care if it was in a sales meeting, product training, conference presentation, or customer QBR. I made myself available to developers so they could solve their pain points and find success.

The sales team and I worked hand-in-hand on a lot of efforts. Outside of direct sales engagements, we'd also co-host field events, internal hackathons, facilitate key meetings at conferences, etc. They would invite their target accounts and I would invite the wider developer community. It was a glorious blend of business, technology, and fun, and everyone walked away having enjoyed the time they spent together. It was authentic and it was meaningful, and it delivered results.

Ask "the People"

After thinking about this moment, I realized that the best path for me to understand where I should go next was to ask the people I had worked with where I shined brightest. So I began collecting quotes and reviewing kind words I had received in the past. And wouldn't you know it, two key things stuck out to me.

The first being how powerful I was as a sales partner.

I had the pleasure of working with Tessa for a few years while I was a Sr. Account Executive. Together, we closed several Enterprise deals that were critical to our company's growth and success. With her technical expertise, people skills and ability to clearly articulate value to prospects and clients, she was invaluable to my individual and our teams’ successes. She’ll be a great asset to any team she joins.

..the first thing that comes to mind is that Tessa inspires better than pretty much anyone I know. A combination of her energy, her optimistic outlook and technical depth make her really effective at inspiring people to see what is possible or what could be accomplished by working together with her.

The second being how knowledgeable and empathetic I am to the needs of developers or technical users.

The first thing that comes to mind about Tessa is that she deeply understands the wants and needs of the developer audience and is able to empathize with them and advocate for them with internal teams. To say another way, she's great at ensuring the teams that build products for developers do so in a way that is developer-friendly and gets at the core of the problem they’re trying to solve. As a bonus, I think she's great at putting all of this into detailed strategy, documents, and plans that are easy to follow and help rally a team behind her to solve.

I had the opportunity to work briefly with Tessa, and even in that short time, she managed to leave a lasting impression and impart a great deal of valuable knowledge. Her deep expertise in developer marketing is immediately apparent, and she has a remarkable ability to connect with and understand her audience. Tessa would be an incredible asset to any team lucky enough to have her!

Tessa's passion for the DevRel work was very much a differentiating factor. In our conversations, her enthusiasm for a good Dev Experience and DevRel function stood out. It gave us confidence that she's not only skilled at her craft but also cares deeply about the quality of her work.

Tessa's difference factor is that she shows up with empathy and understanding while knowing her shit really really well.

What I'm Looking For Next

I'm looking for an opportunity to drive a massive impact at a developer product startup in a technical partnership role. I want to bring people together in a way that leads to revenue for the company and solutions to painful problems for the customer. I want to support the customer throughout the entire lifecycle, not just "selling to them," but truly empowering their team to succeed each and every step of the way. I want to contribute to revenue and retention.

If you're looking for someone like me, book a video call and let's talk about your needs and how I may align.

My Experience In a Nutshell

I’ve worked across developer advocacy, technical sales, community, engineering, and go-to-market strategy at startups and global tech companies. I’ve supported founders in building developer products from the ground up and helped scale adoption through meaningful relationships and clear value. I thrive in the messy middle—where technical insight, user empathy, and business impact come together to drive results.

What You Should Know

Just to save everyone time, here are a few logistical insights:

I will not relocate or work in office.
I am willing to travel and be efficient with time on location.
I'm looking to make at least $200k per year. My last base salary was $305k.
Benefits, like health insurance, PTO, etc. are a requirement.
I'm a 10x contributor when given the space to do so. I thrive when I impact the entire organization, which is why I'm looking to work in a startup.
I'm building stuff on the side—the product behind Built for Devs and another very early stage developer tool. This won't affect my work, but it means I won't sign an agreement stating you get all of my time and mental capcity.
References and people behind the quotes available upon request
I'm thankful for a pretty stacked rolodex, only to be leveraged as I see solutions to existing problems. I value my relationships deeply. Let's solve their problems and I'll want to tell them.
Many say I'm a good leader, but I'd be happy with a high-impact contributor role. I might actually prefer the latter.

My Past Experience In More Depth

I started my tech career as a self-taught developer focusing on the open-source PHP stack, but getting my hands into a lot of different things, technically. I was lead frontend developer at a known agency where I spent most of my time working directly with the clients to get to the root of their technology needs. My last engineering role was at General Mills where I worked with mostly front-end technologies on their brand sites including Java and C++ and took lead on open-source projects usually leveraging WordPress or another PHP-based CMS'. During this stage of my career, I also taught over 300 women to code through an organization called Girl Develop It, where I became a chapter leader and expanded the organization and our efforts in Minneapolis, MN.

I then shifted into what the industry calls developer relations. My first role was more focused on developer enablement. I spent my time spread across customer trainings, sales meetings, writing technical blogs and tutorials, public speaking, and bringing developers together through events, hackathons, and otherwise. I worked very closely with the sales team. I built a meaningful customer advocacy program that drove massive results and helped us expand into a new market successfully. From there, I moved onto building a business around developer advocacy that was later acquired by Common Room.

My next challenge was at Twitter, where I was tasked with strengthening and rebuilding the developer community to prepare for the launch of their v2 developer API. There, I perfected the art of listening to angry developers. I focused on improving the developer feedback program and enabling developers to find success with an API and team that had previously turned their back on them revoking access to key features. Listening and understanding the needs of Twitter's developers allowed me to impact product marketing, making radical shifts to how we communicated our offerings and products, as well as streamlining customer understanding to support monetization and product decisions.

Shifting over to a Fintech startup, I was their Head of DevRel and their first hire related to developer experience. I built the first version of the documentation, building tools and resources that would support our early and future technical customers. I worked directly with those customers to deeply understand their needs, then communicated those needs internally and advocated for improvements to our resources, product, and marketing approach. I also worked closely with engineering to stay connected with the product and help elevate the engineering team through engineering content and recruiting support.

My next challenge allowed me to return to my leadership roots, but in a developer relations capacity. I led developer advocacy and community for a security startup looking to expand their market to developers. I built a very capable DevRel team quickly by just leveraging my network. We impacted the organization early and often through our content and community efforts, and built the first developer motion for the organization.

My last full-time role, before starting my business, was probably my favorite one. I was recruited to join Snapchat to build and expand the Augmented Reality ecosystem across the developer community. My team was responsible for partnerships with developers leveraging our products, such as Bitmoji, Creative Kit, Minis (games and apps inside of Snapchat), and Camera Kit (Snapchat camera technology in an SDK). We had a lot of business shifts over my few years there, so we primarily focused on Camera Kit and getting it in the hands of developers. When I first joined, we focused on the improvement of our developer experience and building a community around our products to drive inspiration and deflect support from our consumer support team. Then, we shifted into empowering developers and bringing them together through virtual and in-person events, hackathons, and other creative efforts. I worked alongside developer marketing, product marketing, product, engineering, events, and partnerships. My team supported our internal conference, Lens Fest, and we hosted internal hackathons with enterprise companies like Red Bull and Tim Horton's to expand what was technically possible with AR.

After Snap cut nearly the entire Camera Kit team, I started my business, Built for Devs. Over the year and a half that I've been running my business I've had the opportunity to serve a variety of different clients, I'll just share a brief list and high-level recap below. In April, I had a revelation around the biggest impact my business could offer, based on my work thus far, and pivoted to focusing on collecting developer insights and market research through product walkthroughs, interviews, and surveys, shedding light on why developers leave before they even hit your funnel. I started building a product around this, and will continue to build the product offering as a side hustle. It's a market gap and major opportunity, but I've run out of runway to do it full-time.

Built for Devs Work in Summary

Fractional developer GTM with a marketing platform API, focused on driving revenue through a technical GTM approach and enabling the sales team to sell to technical audiences
Developer experience audit and recommendations to increase adoption pre-Product Hunt launch of an AI-powered web scraping dev tool.
Developer GTM sprint to identify the optimal developer segments and approach for driving awareness of a securiry-as-code dev tool.
Developer and enterprise targeted website messaging for a database dev tool focused on local-first and edge AI use cases for their next funding round.
Ecosystem audit, interviews, and findings to understand how to drive wide adoption of a security-focused open-source project.
Developer insights and recommendations to drive revenue and improve the overall presence and GTM approach of a performant distributed database platform.
Fractional early-stage GTM to identify key use cases and market potential of a dev tool enabling reproducible software. Key use cases were MLOps and Robotics.
Developer Relations coaching where I was able to elevate practitioners and leaders career and tactical approach.
Defined a key developer market opportunity for a feature flag dev tool before runway ran out.
Solicit insights and draft findings for an early-stage AI building tool to understand their potential market fit in a crowded AI ecosystem, enabling a product pivot and clear GTM motion.