Head of Developer Communities

PayPal • San Jose, CA

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

As Head of Developer Communities, you will lead the transformation and global scale of PayPal’s Developer Relations (DevRel) community strategy. This role provides strategic leadership for building trusted, inclusive developer and merchant communities that accelerate adoption of PayPal products and improve end-to-end developer experience. You will lead a globally distributed team responsible for community programs, advocacy initiatives, advisory boards, and engagement across online and in-person channels. Acting as the voice of the developer, you will partner closely with Engineering, Product Management, Marketing, Sales, and Corporate Communications to translate community feedback into improvements across APIs, SDKs, documentation, onboarding, and platform capabilities. This role ensures PayPal delivers a consistent, high-quality, and brand-aligned experience across the global developer ecosystem while driving measurable business impact.

Requirements

• 10+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 2 years of experience leading others

Nice To Haves

• 10+ years of experience leading developer communities, DevRel, or product-adjacent programs at global scale.
• Proven experience managing distributed, cross-functional, and international teams.
• Strong background in developer platforms, APIs, SDKs, and web or ecommerce architectures.
• Experience influencing product and engineering roadmaps through community insights and data.
• Demonstrated success building advocacy, advisory, and ambassador programs.
• Deep familiarity with open-source technologies and developer ecosystems, ideally within FinTech or ecommerce.
• Exceptional communication, storytelling, and stakeholder-management skills.
• Data-driven mindset with experience leveraging analytics, testing, and feedback loops to optimize engagement.
• Passion for coaching, mentoring, and developing high-performing teams.
• Ability to drive alignment and execution across complex organizations.
• Willingness to travel approximately 20–30% to support global community initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Establish a shared vision across the company for one or more products, or a platform product enabling development & scalability, with a deliberate and cohesive strategy.
• Leads product strategy development, and develops a clear, executable view of the product strategy with cross-functional stakeholders.
• Influences the architectural roadmap and balances innovative design and technical implementation, while balancing regulatory requirements, time-to-market, meeting customer needs and product profitability.
• Champions the customer experience and prioritizes customer needs in product requirements and decision making.
• Defines and uses metrics that inform the success of products including usability studies, research and market analysis.
• Standardizes workstreams to include analytics, customer discovery, market research and competitive analysis to drive data-driven decision-making.
• Responsible for product profitability, including budgetary decisions.
• Leads operational mechanisms that drive execution and accountability including Product Reviews, Operating Reviews, and Business Reviews.
• Interfaces with senior leadership as needed.
• Maximizes efficiency in a constantly evolving environment where the process is fluid and creative solutions are the standard.
• Create, lead, and scale PayPal’s global developer and merchant community strategy across online and offline channels.
• Identify, launch, and grow developer communities where PayPal products deliver the strongest value, driving experimentation, adoption, and long-term engagement.
• Own and evolve community presence across third-party platforms (e.g., Discord, Reddit, Stack Overflow) in addition to PayPal-hosted properties.
• Design and operate developer and merchant advocacy programs, including Champions programs, advisory boards, beta communities, and early-access initiatives.
• Serve as the primary advocate for developers by translating community feedback into actionable insights for Engineering and Product teams.
• Partner with Product and Engineering to influence roadmaps, improve APIs, SDKs, documentation, onboarding experiences, and developer tooling.
• Lead global social, content, and communications strategies tailored to developers, including blogs, videos, technical content, and messaging platforms.
• Coordinate community and advocacy services provided to business units and product teams to ensure consistency, quality, and scale.
• Plan, host, and participate in developer and merchant events, meetups, and conferences to grow awareness and strengthen relationships.
• Establish success metrics and reporting frameworks to measure engagement, sentiment, adoption, and business impact.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Corporate Marketing, PR/Comms, Legal, Sales, and regional teams to ensure aligned, compliant, and brand-consistent execution.
• Build strong external relationships with developers, merchants, partners, industry leaders, and media.
• Stay current on AI, FinTech, ecommerce, and developer-platform trends to continuously evolve community strategy.
• Manage budgets, resources, and vendor partnerships to support global community programs at scale.

Benefits

• At PayPal, we’re committed to building an equitable and inclusive global economy. And we can’t do this without our most important asset-you. That’s why we offer comprehensive, choice-based programs, to support all aspects of personal wellbeing—physical, emotional, and financial—delivering meaningful value where it matters most.
• We strive to create a flexible, balanced work culture with a holistic approach to benefits, including generous paid time off, healthcare coverage for you and your family, and resources to create financial security and support your mental health.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees