Developer Relations Engineer (f/m/d) - San Francisco - Full-time
Software Engineering
USD 160k-220k / year + Equity
Posted on Sep 8, 2026
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Developer Relations Engineer (f/m/d) - San Francisco
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Developer Relations Engineer (f/m/d) - San Francisco
ZenML · Full-time · San Francisco (in-person, out in the scene) - $160K-$220K + Stock options
The short version
ZenML is the open-source framework for production ML and agentic pipelines, built in Munich, used by thousands of engineering teams worldwide. We have a large GitHub community, real usage signals, and paying customers. The product is there, as well as, the community. What we don't have is a face in San Francisco - someone who brings the SF AI community together around ZenML, and engineers that energy into pipeline. That's where you come into play. You'll be our first US hire, reporting directly to the founders. You'll build the community, host the events, be the person everyone in the scene knows - and you'll run it all like an engineer: instrumented, signal-driven, and measurable. Bringing people together is the job. Turning that into revenue is how we both know it's working.
What you'll actually do
Own the SF community and run the events. Host a ZenML meetup every two weeks - real rooms, great speakers, the kind of event people actually show up for and keep talking after. Build it from zero into the room the SF ML-infra crowd doesn't want to miss. This is the heartbeat of the role.
Be everywhere. Work the AI-infra meetups, hackathons, and conferences that matter. Be the connector - the person who knows everyone and introduces them to each other. When someone says "MLOps" or "ML pipelines" at a dinner in SoMa, we want your name to come up.
Evangelize, loudly and credibly. Talks, blog posts, social, short demo videos - content that comes from what you're seeing in the community, not a calendar handed to you. You're the voice of ZenML in the US.
Demo the product for real. You can run ZenML live in front of a technical audience, answer real questions, and read code well enough to know what's going on. You don't ship features - our engineers do that - but you're never the person hiding behind slides.
Engineer the motion underneath it all. This is what makes you different from a classic community hire. You don't just run events and hope - you instrument them. Who showed up, who's now running pipelines, which GitHub repos lit up, which accounts are ramping. You wire product and community signals (Mixpanel, GitHub, Attio, Clay) into an automated flow - enrichment, scoring, follow-up - so every conversation you start in a room turns into traceable pipeline instead of a business card in a drawer.
Be our eyes and ears in the Valley. What people are building, what frustrates them, who's evaluating what - it flows straight back into product and GTM. Direct impact from day one.
What success looks like at 6 months
ZenML is a known name in the SF AI-infra scene - a thriving series with real, growing attendance, and a community that knows you and us.
A measurable stream of pipeline and signups traceable to the community and events you built - the proof that the motion works.
A system, not a hustle: product and community signals reliably feeding qualified, followed-up conversations, so it compounds instead of resetting every month.
A content and social presence that pulls all of the above together.
Reputation and community first, pipeline as proof, and an engineered motion so none of it depends on heroics.
Who you are
Ambitious and high-energy. This is a senior role but we'd take raw hunger, hustle, and talent over a longer résumé any day. If you're the person who makes things happen and can't sit still, the exact line count of your experience matters far less to us.
Real reps in DevRel, community, growth, or developer-facing GTM - ideally somewhere smaller and scrappier than a FAANG. Whether that's a year or a few, what counts is that you've gotten people in a room and followed up so it turned into something.
A natural connector and host. Ambitious, high-energy, genuinely likes people and brings them together. You send the slightly audacious DM, you make the "small ask," you remember names, and people leave your events wanting to come back.
Technical enough for a developer product. You can demo a Python framework live, read code, work with APIs, and hold your own with ML engineers. You know when to pull in an engineer for the deep stuff.
Systems-minded. You instinctively turn a manual, one-off hustle into something repeatable and measurable. Comfortable in the modern GTM stack (a CRM, enrichment, Clay or similar, light automation and LLM workflows)
Self-directed to a fault. You'll run the US presence largely solo. Nobody tells you what to do on a Tuesday morning - that excites you rather than terrifies you. And you won't be totally alone: the founders are in SF regularly, so you'll get real in-person strategy time even though HQ is nine time zones away in Munich.
In San Francisco, or moving there. This job does not work remotely. The whole point is presence.
Nice to have
Existing network in the SF AI / ML / infra community
A visible personal brand - talks you've given, events you've run that people remember, a following
Experience running GTM off product-usage or open-source signals (PLG / usage-based motions)
Experience with open-source communities (GitHub-native audiences behave differently)
Familiarity with the MLOps / LLMOps / agent-infrastructure landscape
What we offer
Attractive incentivization package including stock options - you're employee #1 in the US, and the package reflects that
Real budget for events, travel, and tooling - hosting things and building the motion both cost money, and we know it
Direct line to the founders, who you'll see in SF regularly; no layers, no politics
The chance to build ZenML's entire US presence and go-to-market with your fingerprints on it
About Us
ZenML is more than a platform - it's the next-generation framework making production AI accessible to every organization. From classical ML to autonomous agents, our open-source toolkit empowers teams to build robust internal AI platforms. We help data scientists and engineers ship reliably and at lightning speed.
Get a feeling for the people behind the product.
How to apply
Skip the cover letter. Send us:
Your LinkedIn or CV
Tell us what you'd do in your first month - the more concrete, the better
Optional: one event you've run or community you've grown, with numbers