Founding Developer Relations Lead

Building the Future of Crypto. Our Krakenites are a world-class team with crypto conviction, united by our desire to discover and unlock the potential of crypto and blockchain technology. You are invited to help build a new Developer & Agent Interface capability at Payward, a role at the intersection of Engineering, Product, and Growth. This isn’t a traditional DevRel role. You’ll create playbooks, teams, and motion from scratch. We’re looking for someone who wants to help build that capability for the long term—and who can grow into the leader of the organization that emerges from it.

Responsibilities

• Own developer activation end‑to‑end across APIs, SDKs, CLIs, MCP servers, wallets, and emerging agent interfaces.
• Drive adoption metrics that matter: API usage, SDK installs, production integrations, GitHub engagement, and agent retrievals.
• Build quickstarts, reference implementations, SDKs, CLIs, MCP servers, and developer tooling that make Payward easy to integrate with.
• Partner directly with Product and Engineering to ensure every launch is developer‑ready and agent‑friendly on day one.
• Help define how developers and AI agents discover, understand, and interact with Payward infrastructure.
• Create technical narratives, launch content, demos, and documentation that establish Payward as a leading developer platform.
• Carry keynotes, live demos, and technical presentations at industry events and developer conferences.
• Represent developers internally by identifying friction, surfacing ecosystem needs, and influencing product direction.
• Help build the long‑term DNA, processes, and culture of a world‑class Developer & Agent Interface organization.

Skills and Experience

• Built and scaled developer adoption at a top‑tier developer platform company such as Stripe, Vercel, Cloudflare, Anthropic, GitHub, OpenAI, Twilio, Stainless, or equivalent.
• Strong technical credibility – you can read OpenAPI specifications, ship code, review integrations, and engage engineers as a peer.
• Proven track record of owning measurable adoption outcomes, not just awareness or engagement metrics.
• Exceptional storyteller capable of writing launch posts, delivering keynotes, creating demos, and making complex products feel intuitive.
• Builder mentality with a bias toward shipping and experimentation.
• Deep understanding of modern developer ecosystems and workflows.
• Agent‑era literacy – you’ve worked with MCP servers, agent tooling, structured retrieval, or AI‑native developer experiences and understand where retrieval beats SEO.
• Experience working closely with engineering and product teams to shape the developer experience itself, not just the messaging around it.

Nice to Have

• Experience building developer platforms from an early stage rather than joining an already mature DevRel organization.
• Understanding of wallets, identity, authentication, and agent‑native transaction flows.

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, assessing candidates in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance. As an equal opportunity employer, we don’t tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind. Whether that’s based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state or local laws.