Role overview

We are seeking an experienced User Community Lead with an entrepreneurial mindset to own and grow our developer-focused community. This is not a traditional marketing role; we're looking for a builder who understands what developers care about and how to connect with them authentically. You will be responsible for raising awareness and increasing adoption of balenaCloud by building a thriving community and amplifying our users' voices.

You'll need a solid understanding of how to leverage various channels, including our website, social media, forums, and third-party developer sites, to drive engagement and grow our top-of-funnel. You will work closely with our Partner Community Lead, and the rest of our growth team, to ensure our user and partner ecosystems thrive in synergy.

Responsibilities

• User Persona Understanding: Analyze our ideal user profile to get a clear picture of how we can best enable them, through interviews and other research.
• Community Amplification: Run experiments to get our users to talk about Balena on our own platforms (website, forums, blog) and on external ones (Reddit, GitHub, social media, etc.). Maybe even launch a new community forum.
• Social Media Management: Manage our social media presence, ensuring our voice is authentic and engaging for our target audience.
• Website Optimization: Ensure that our website speaks directly to our target audience and attracts the right people.
• Insights & Feedback: Run experiments to get users to share insights with the Balena team (e.g., through regular interviews, all-hands meetings, and company summits), and communicate these market insights internally.
• Content & Video Creation: This is a key part of the role. You should be comfortable filming yourself and interviewing users to create video content that showcases Balena-related topics and community stories.

Required Qualifications

• Entrepreneurial Mindset: You are a strategic thinker who can take the topic of building a vibrant community, transform that into a clear plan, and do whatever is needed to make it happen. This includes rolling up your sleeves and doing the work, as well as enabling and orchestrating efforts with other team members.
• Developer Advocate: You possess a deep understanding of what motivates developers and how to speak their language.
• Seasoned Professional: You have 5+ years of proven experience in developer relations, community building, or developer-focused marketing.
• A Collaborator: You know how to work with and enable others to achieve a shared goal.
• A Compelling Communicator: You are not shy about being on camera to create engaging video content that builds connections with our users.
• A portfolio or links to past video work is required for consideration.

Preferred

• EU-friendly timezone. Located within a +/- 3-hour timezone difference from Central European (Summer) Time

Benefits

• Competitive salary

• Autonomous vacation allowance

• 12 weeks maternity and paternity leave for new parents

• Equipment of your choice and hardware for side projects

• Books of your choice to help you in your work

• Annual company gathering in an international location, Balena Summit 2024

• Working with a talented and globally distributed team

• Flexible schedules by default

Who we are

Balena is a highly distributed team that has embraced a remote-first approach since 2013. We are a group of individuals from across the globe working together to achieve our mission: “Enable people to leverage technology to address the real world challenges of our time.”.

Balena wants to do good in the world and here is our why. Our focus is on enabling team members to be the best they can be rather than controlling what everyone does from the top down, and this creates challenges that require just as much creative thinking as our product.

How we work

• We have been remote-first since 2013 and have just team members in different corners of this world - they need to be supplied, happy, aligned, fulfilled and paid, and they need to be able to work and communicate asynchronously

• We like to think from first principles and are usually resistant to using ready-made solutions unless we deeply understand the rationale,

• We organize ourselves based on the best use of our collective abilities to solve our highest priority problems at any given time, rather than by a strict hierarchy, read more about our Intentional Work Framework

• We practice radical candor and transparency with open, honest, and clear communication

• We’re not afraid to fail as long as we learn from our mistakes

• We’re always looking for common patterns that allow us to reduce complexity

• We embrace short-term pain for long-term gain, building products that will stand the test of time

• We operate legal entities in three countries, but want balena to operate as a global whole where geography doesn’t matter

Does any of this sound interesting to you? Work with us and we will offer you the opportunity to add value by finding and solving problems while constantly learning your craft. We will enable and support your growth, but you should also be open and flexible to figure things out on your own.