Developer Relations

Welcome to the GitLab Developer Relations Handbook

Migration in progress: The Developer Relations team has been split into separate teams in Product and Technical Marketing (Developer Advocacy) and Growth Marketing (Co-Create & Community Engineering). We are migrating this handbook content into the corresponding team sections and updating its ownership.

What is DevRel?

Developer Relations (short: DevRel) operates at the intersection of technology, community, and advocacy, serving as the voice and ears of GitLab in the wider tech world. Their core mission revolves around nurturing and sustaining a vibrant, engaged community of developers, contributors, and users. This involves a multifaceted approach that includes creating educational content, organizing events and workshops, developing programs, and providing platforms for knowledge exchange and collaboration. The team not only focuses on promoting GitLab’s features and capabilities but also actively listens to and incorporates feedback from the community to inform product development and improvements.

Our mission & vision

Developer Relations drives platform awareness and adoption by enabling GitLab customers, connecting through community, and engaging developers where they are. GitLab engages with more than 3000 developers every month on GitLab.com alone, and receives more than 250 contributions every month, giving us a unique level of influence in the DevSecOps space and helping accelerate our innovation. Our ultimate goal is to raise awareness of GitLab and drive customer success by winning the hearts & minds of developers through best-in-class technical enablement and an active community of contributors.

In Developer Relations, we align our mission and vision with the company’s three year strategy. We believe that everyone can contribute. To help GitLab reach this goal, we aim to double outreach and engagement, strengthen our community presence, and support a healthy community of contributors. Ultimately, these goals boost awareness, adoption, and power our dual flywheels.

Our Strategy

Our operational strategy is documented in our internal handbook but is classified as confidential due to business sensitivity, customer impact, and to foster a psychological safe environment for our team members. Below you can find our strategic plans that are open to the wider community and where the Developer Relations team welcomes collaboration.

• Contributor Program Unification & Growth Plan
• Co-Creation Initiative

How we work

Developer Relations Team resources

• Programs resources
• Meetup checklist

Our handbooks

• Developer Relations Engineering
  • Contributors Program
• Developer Relations Programs
  • Open Source
  • Education
  • Co-Create

Our workflows

• Workflows and tools
• Team Budgets
• Swag operations
• Email

Community Interest

If you are working on changes to the company, product, or pricing that are expected to have a meaningful impact on members of the wider GitLab community or the GitLab brand, we encourage you to use the label ~Community Interest so that the Developer Relations team can represent the interests of the wider GitLab community in the planning process.

All members of the Developer Relations team should be subscribed to this label in both the gitlab-com and gitlab-org projects.

Our calendars

We use team-wide calendars for collective notification and to manage team logistics and events. Additionally, specific teams within Developer Relations may maintain calendars specific to their programs (such as the Developer Advocacy team calendar).

• Developer Relations Team
• Community Events
• Developer Advocacy Team

Developer Relations KPIs

The Developer Relations team monitors several Key Performance Indicators and related Performance Indicators.

1. Unique Wider Community Contributors per Month (target: Above 200 contributors per month) 🔗
2. Wider Community merged MRs per release 🔗
3. Developer Relations Monthly Outreach
4. Active Community Members
5. GitLab for Education Quarterly Active Seats
6. MRARR (target: Identified in Tableau Chart) 🔗

Team Logos

GitLab Developer Relations team logos can be found in .png and .svg formats by searching for gitlab-devrel-logo in Google Drive.

Team Budgets

Learn more on the Developer Relations budget page

Community Learning Pathway

The Community Learning Pathway is a course built to educate the community on how the Developer Relations team works, the different community programs and how to contribute the GitLab. Members of the Community and GitLab team members who complete the course will earn a badge.

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