Developer Advocate Salary
You might have seen your favourite coding YouTuber become a developer advocate for a large tech company. And you might be wondering what a developer advocate is. In short, a developer advocate is someone who has strong development skills and strong communication skills. They are not shy in front of a camera or taking the stage at a tech conference.
Developer advocates act as stewards for a company’s open-source project, which means they need to have strong communication and community-building skills so that they can rally developers around the project. Advocates will speak at conferences, attend and run meetups, create YouTube channels — whatever is required to get a community of developers on board with a project.
The average salary for a developer advocate is $124,000
Developer advocates in the United States earn an average salary of $124,000 per year or around $10,000 per month. This figure includes all additional pay such as cash bonus, commission, tips, and profit sharing. Since developer advocates are huge promoters of a project/company they generally receive generous stock options between $20,000-$50,000 per year.
Average salary by country
In most cases, developers are paid considerably more in the United States than in Europe, Australia or Canada. But surprisingly, that’s not the case with developer advocates. Based on Glassdoor data, we can see developer advocates in the UK and Australia actually earn more on average than those working in the United States. That being said, with far more salaries reported in the United States compared with UK or Australia, it's likely this data is skewed somewhat.
Developer advocate salary in Germany
While Germany has one of the largest tech markets in Europe, there are only a handful of developer advocates. And the same is true when we look at job postings on LinkedIn and Glassdoor — there are half a dozen advocate positions available at any one time. So if you are a developer advocate or want to become one in Germany, competition will be tough. But thankfully, if you do get a position, the pay is great!
A developer advocate in Germany can earn upwards of €80,000 ($87,000 USD) annually which is about €6,500 per month. The salary is lower compared to the United States or the UK but it’s higher on average than other developer roles in Germany. For comparison, the average pay for a software developer in Germany is €62,000 while the average pay for a senior developer is €82,000. So a developer advocate can expect to earn the same amount as a senior developer with the added bonus of stock options and profit sharing.
Salary by Company
Looking at what top international tech companies pay developer advocates is a good way to understand the top end of the salary range. Developer advocates working at Google or Meta are most likely the top earners for this role. Here are some of the developer advocate salaries reported at top tech companies in the United States.
Fair and transparent salaries
If you overestimate your value you might miss out on the job entirely and if you underestimate your expected pay you could be missing out on an extra $10,000-$20,000 per year. This is why transparent pay is so important for developers. The more developers who are willing to share their salaries the better salary negotiation is going to be for everyone.
So if you are a developer working for a startup or company in Germany, make sure you leave a salary review so that other developers can know what to expect and gain a little more clarity when negotiating pay.
