---
title: "Developer Advocate"
description: "Helps software developers succeed with a company's tools and APIs through tutorials, talks, sample code and community work, and brings their feedback back."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/developer-advocate"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Developer Advocate

**Category:** Sales and Related · **SOC code:** 41-9031 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 41-9031.00

Helps software developers succeed with a company's tools and APIs through tutorials, talks, sample code and community work, and brings their feedback back.

Also advertised as: Developer Relations Engineer; DevRel Engineer; Developer Evangelist; Technical Evangelist; Developer Relations Manager.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $124,900 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $60.05/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $73,870 to $195,270, with the middle half between $92,890 and $161,230
- **Total US employment:** 51,790
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +2.8% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 3,800 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 26/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 51,790 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $73,870 |
| 25th | $92,890 |
| 50th (median) | $124,900 |
| 75th | $161,230 |
| 90th | $195,270 |
| Mean (average) | $130,140 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| DE | $167,200 | $167,522 | 80 |
| MD | $153,410 | $146,162 | 850 |
| RI | $149,750 | $146,412 | 30 |
| WA | $147,620 | $137,946 | 760 |
| CO | $139,990 | $135,844 | 2,800 |
| CA | $139,160 | $125,686 | 6,310 |
| NJ | $139,010 | $127,761 | 1,760 |
| NY | $137,480 | $127,389 | 3,150 |
| MA | $136,200 | $128,786 | 3,150 |
| WV | $135,260 | $151,134 | 40 |
| AZ | $131,870 | $130,983 | 1,000 |
| AR | $130,760 | $150,408 | 30 |
| TX | $130,610 | $134,570 | 6,800 |
| OR | $128,170 | $124,002 | 540 |
| ID | $128,030 | $134,071 | 360 |

30 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 45 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/developer-advocate/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/developer-advocate.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 51,600 in the 2025–2035 base year to 53,000 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 1,400 jobs, or +2.8%. About as fast as average: 2.8% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 3,800 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Moderate-term on-the-job training.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 57.3% |
| Master's Degree | 25.2% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 11.5% |
| Some College Courses | 6.0% |

## What the work involves

- Write tutorials, blog posts and sample applications
- Speak at conferences, meetups and webinars
- Answer developer questions in forums and community channels
- Record videos and live coding streams
- Gather developer feedback and report it to product teams
- Review documentation and onboarding for friction
- Organize hackathons and community programs

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Speaking — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Persuasion — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Evaluation — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Sales and Marketing — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Engineering and Technology — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Expression — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Clarity — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Enterprising (E), Conventional (C), Social (S).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| E — Enterprising | 5.85 |
| C — Conventional | 4.45 |
| S — Social | 3.59 |
| I — Investigative | 3.58 |
| R — Realistic | 3.38 |
| A — Artistic | 2.67 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ESTJ | 78.6 |
| ENTJ | 71.1 |
| ESFJ | 71.0 |
| ESTP | 64.7 |
| ENFJ | 60.2 |

Best-fitting types: ESTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Sales Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/sales-engineer) — median $124,900
- [Sales Representative, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Technical and Scientific Product](https://nuecareer.com/careers/sales-representative-wholesale-and-manufacturing-technical-and-scientific-product) — median $104,920
- [Sales Representative of Services, Except Advertising, Insurance, Financial Services, and Travel](https://nuecareer.com/careers/sales-representative-of-services) — median $69,990
- [Architectural and Engineering Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/architectural-and-engineering-manager) — median $171,270
- [Logistics Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/logistics-engineer) — median $82,320
- [Industrial Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/industrial-engineer) — median $102,440
- [Electronics Engineer, Except Computer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/electronics-engineer) — median $130,220
- [Solar Sales Representative and Assessor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/solar-sales-representative-and-assessor) — median $104,920
- [Manufacturing Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/manufacturing-engineer) — median $102,440
- [Computer Systems Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/computer-systems-analyst) — median $105,850

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/developer-advocate