Developer Relations Manager - Ably

At Ably, we’re powering the realtime digital revolution at scale, delivering billions of messages for millions of devices every day and supporting organizations like Harness, EA, Panasonic, and HubSpot. We're looking for a Developer Relations Manager to build Ably's presence, trust, and credibility with developers evaluating Ably AI Transport.

About this role

This is a foundational role; Ably hasn't had a dedicated DevRel function in some time, and you'll be building it back up from the ground within the Marketing team, working closely with Developer Experience and Product. You'll be the voice of the developer inside Ably and the voice of Ably to developers: understanding what's genuinely driving or blocking adoption, and using that to shape our community presence, technical content, and product conversations.

Day to day, you will

• Be the feedback loop between developers and Ably: Talk to developers evaluating and using Ably AI Transport through community engagement, conversations, and events, turning what you hear into clear, specific input for Product and Engineering.
• Build a genuine presence in the Temporal and Vercel communities: Show up where the right practitioners gather, contributing real knowledge, engaging in technical debate, and building relationships.
• Turn insight into technical education: Write guides and demos that help developers solve real problems with Ably, remaining honest about failure modes for senior engineers evaluating Ably for production.
• Help improve documentation quality: Work with DevEx and AI Transport engineering teams to keep technical content accurate and easy for developers and AI coding assistants to use.

What success looks like

• Clear, specific developer feedback that visibly shapes what Product and Engineering build and prioritise.
• A credible, genuinely engaged presence in the Temporal community, growing into Vercel and other framework communities.
• Technical content and demos, grounded in real developer insight, that get shared without prompting and drive self-serve signups.
• Ably showing up accurately when developers ask AI assistants to support technical evaluations and builds.

We'd love to talk if you have

• Previous DevRel, developer marketing, or developer education experience at a developer-first infrastructure company.
• A technical background: ability to write real code against an API, read a technical architecture, and hold your own in a conversation with an engineering team.
• Experience engaging directly with developers and turning insights into actionable feedback for product and engineering.
• Experience building or growing a developer community with a focus on quality and health.
• A genuine understanding of how developers evaluate and adopt new tools, including the impact of AI assistants.
• A track record of technical writing that developers actually read and share.
• A point of view on realtime infrastructure and AI development patterns.
• Strong cross-functional instincts across Product, Engineering, and commercial teams.

Bonus points if you have

• An existing developer audience (blog, newsletter, YouTube channel, or social following).
• Direct experience with WebSocket infrastructure, pub/sub, realtime APIs, or building AI products that need streaming and session management.

What’s it like to work at Ably?

• Remote-first and flexible: UK-based teams come together in person once per month in our London hub (next to Old Street) and company-wide gatherings occur twice per year.
• Equity: EMI share options programme.
• Enhanced holiday allowance: 28 days of paid annual leave (27 regular days plus a day off for your birthday).
• Parental leave: Enhanced package for new family members.
• Workstation & Learning budgets: £500 on joining home workstation budget (£150 p/a thereafter) and £1,000 annual L&D budget with 5% L&D time.
• Healthcare & Wellbeing: Private healthcare with BUPA, medical cash plan, Self Space mental wellbeing coaching, Juno wellbeing budget, life assurance, and income protection.