PurPassionDigital / Everywhere

AI Developer Advocate / Technical Educator

Unexpected

The pull to get what works to more people

Spread · Contained → Widespread

The shape of the work

Pace
  • A hard push you keep up for a long stretch
  • A steady rhythm with room to breathe
What your week looks likeA bit of everything — hard to pin down
How much you move around at workMostly at a desk, but you get up for site visits or other work
Whether you can work from anywhereMostly remote, but you show up sometimes
How quickly you receive feedback on your workA few weeks before the picture clears
What you're actually working withNumbers, measurements, records — things you read on a screen / Concepts, theories, designs, stories — things you think up / Other humans, face-to-face — talking, teaching, treating, leading

Behaviours this work is made of

Core
  • Physical or visual showing. Here's how it works.
  • Spreading belief in something's value.
  • Structured transfer of knowledge.
Also present
  • Increasing signal, reach, impact.
  • Linking the right people, resources, or ideas together — the direct, simple act.
  • Giving internal experience verbal form.

In words

An AI developer advocate helps outside developers learn about, adopt and succeed with an AI product, model or platform. The job is a mix of engineering and teaching. A typical week might include writing a tutorial, building a sample application, recording a video walkthrough, answering questions on a forum and giving a talk at a conference. The advocate also carries information the other way, telling the product team where developers get stuck and what they ask for.

Called a developer advocate, developer relations engineer or developer evangelist, and found in technology companies in the US, Europe, India and other regions. Spread is the pull: the work makes a tool known and usable by far more people than the team that built it could reach alone. Explanation is close behind, because most of the effort goes into making something complicated clear enough for a developer to try.

There's a guide here if you want one

Kitsune can talk through anything on this page — whether it might suit you, what to do next, questions this page doesn't answer. Everything here is yours to read either way.

You are judged by whether developers succeed, not by how many people attend a talk. Honest advocates say where a product is weak, because developers find out fast, and trust is the thing that the role depends on. Advocates who only promote lose their audience.

The ground moves quickly in AI. Models, tools and best practices change within months, so an advocate keeps learning new material while teaching the last version. Content ages fast, and old tutorials need updating or removing.

Most advocates start as software engineers, data scientists or technical writers who also teach: they write a blog, give talks, run a meetup or contribute to open-source projects. Some come from teaching or technical support. A degree in computer science helps but is not required, and a public record of useful tutorials and projects counts for a great deal. Careers lead to senior and lead advocate roles, developer relations management, product management, or engineering and technical writing roles.

Before you go