For years, I’ve watched organizations struggle to create effective developer personas. Marketing teams focus on job titles, product teams build customer archetypes, and DevRel teams focus on technical communities. The result? Fragmented views that often miss the deeper motivations driving developers and teams working at cross-purposes.
After 15+ years building personas and commissioning/running/using audience understanding research, I’m proposing a solution: a unified set of motivation-based developer personas that transcend roles, technologies, and career stages.
Introducing the Developer Personas
I’ve just published v1 of a collection of developer personas designed specifically for Developer Relations and Marketing professionals. These personas shift away from the usual role-based or technology-based categorizations to focus on what truly drives developers:
- ‘Devon’ the Director – Technical Leadership & Business Strategy
- Quote: “I want to stretch my strategic and managerial skills for greater impact.”
- Motivations: Business impact, team development, strategic influence, sustainable engineering
- ‘Gale’ the Guardian – Technical Excellence & Reliability First
- Quote: “I’m passionate about problem-solving through technical excellence.”
- Motivations: Mastery & quality, elegant solutions, transparency & control
- ‘Perry’ the Pioneer – Innovation & Cutting-Edge Technology Explorer
- Quote: “I love being on the frontier of innovation and tech.”
- Motivations: Learning & growth, community connection, freedom to innovate
- ‘Alex’ the Artist – Creativity & User Experience Craftsperson
- Quote: “I want to write code that is beautiful and could be hung in a museum.”
- Motivations: User delight, creative expression, interdisciplinary work, distinctive style
- ‘Taylor’ the Tactician – Practical Implementation & Reliable Delivery
- Quote: “I execute with precision to meet the team’s objectives on time and to spec.”
- Motivations: Reliable delivery, team success, skill building, consistent quality
Check out the complete personas in my dev-personas GitHub repository.
Why Motivation-Based Personas Matter
Traditional personas often fail because they focus on surface-level attributes rather than core motivations. A Senior Developer at a startup might share the same fundamental drives as a mid-level engineer at an enterprise, despite different titles and technologies.
By understanding what truly motivates developers, we can:
- Create more resonant messaging and content
- Design products that align with how developers actually think
- Build developer experiences that speak to different motivational profiles
- Connect with developers at a deeper level throughout their career journey
Common Challenges with Traditional Personas
In my experience, persona development usually splinters organizations rather than unifying them:
- Marketing teams anchor on job titles for campaign planning and metrics, missing the “why” behind developer behavior and why content could be created for their campaigns
- Product teams focus on customer archetypes, helping with specific design specs and feature roadmaps but missing broader patterns
- DevRel teams organize around the technical communities they speak with, sometimes losing sight of underlying motivations and how these communities align with business outcomes
The result? Each team creates its own version of personas that only serve their specific needs, leading to disconnected strategies and ineffective developer engagement.
Putting These Personas into Practice
These aren’t just theoretical constructs—they’re practical tools for improving how we engage developers:
- Content creation: Craft different entry points for Pioneers (who want possibilities) versus Tacticians (who need clear guidance)
- Product development: Balance features that address Guardian needs (technical excellence) with Artist requirements (creative expression)
- Documentation: Structure information differently for Directors (strategic context) versus Guardians (technical depth)
- Community building: Create spaces that serve different motivational profiles
The Journey Behind These Personas
These personas stem from research I commissioned in 2018 to represent the global developer audience through a product-agnostic lens. I began presenting and socializing them in at developer marketing summits in 2019-2020, but the Pandemic and a subsequent job change paused the initiative indefinitely.
Recently, I joined a DevRel Foundation Working Group focused on aggregating resources for DevRel professionals, which inspired me to revisit these personas. Being between roles gave me the time to update and publish them for others to use and build upon.
Next Steps
I’m seeking feedback on these personas and exploring opportunities for their adoption – you can either share your thoughts directly or via the GH repository.
- Feedback – drop me a note or start a GH discussion thread. I’d love to know if they resonate with your experience of the developer community? Have you used similar frameworks? How might you apply them in your context?
- Improve – Submit an issue or pull request directly on a Dev Persona
- Collaborate – And feel free to reach out with insights or to discuss potential applications
Together, we can build a more nuanced understanding of the diverse developer community we serve.
