Developer relations engineer at GitHub

As asked

Your public quickstart works on your laptop but fails for many new users with authentication and dependency errors. How do you diagnose and fix it?

Sample answer outline

Start by reproducing in a clean environment, ideally a fresh container or CI job with no cached credentials. Check every assumed prerequisite: package manager version, environment variables, API key scopes, region defaults, network calls, and copy-paste commands. The fix should include clearer errors, preflight checks, pinned or bounded dependency versions, and an automated smoke test that runs the published quickstart. Strong DevRel candidates explain how they collect failure reports without shaming users and how the findings become product improvements. A common miss is only editing the prose while leaving the fragile path intact.

Expect these follow-ups

• What would your quickstart CI test actually run?
• How do you decide between adding explanation and simplifying the product flow?
• What telemetry would you add to know where developers drop off?

As asked

You are asked to document a new API, but the only source material is the implementation, tests, and a few Slack threads. How do you produce accurate docs?

Sample answer outline

A strong writer triangulates from code, tests, and engineers rather than rewriting Slack notes. Start by identifying the audience, main tasks, authentication path, request and response shapes, error cases, limits, and versioning behaviour. Run the examples against a real or local environment so the docs are executable, not aspirational. The candidate should push for missing product decisions where the code is ambiguous. Interviewers look for accuracy discipline: docs review, changelog links, owned examples, and a maintenance path when the API changes.

Expect these follow-ups

• What do you do when the implementation and the intended behaviour disagree?
• How do you test code samples in docs?
• Which parts belong in reference docs versus a tutorial?

As asked

You are releasing a new SDK. Walk me through how you structure the README, what sections you include, and how you order them. What are you optimizing for?

Sample answer outline

A strong answer names concrete sections: one-liner description, install command, a working five-line quick-start snippet that actually runs, authentication setup, core use cases, link to full docs, and contribution guide. The candidate explains they optimize for time-to-first-success, meaning a developer can clone and run something real in under three minutes. They mention that the quick-start code must be copy-pasteable without edits and that badges for build status and npm version signal project health immediately.

Expect these follow-ups

• What would you cut if you had to keep the README under 80 lines?

As asked

Your team is releasing v2 of a popular SDK that removes three previously public methods. How do you plan and execute the developer communication around this breaking change?

Sample answer outline

A strong answer covers a multi-channel strategy: deprecation warnings in v1 with a timeline, a migration guide published before release with before/after code diffs for each removed method, a changelog entry that explains why each method was removed, a blog post or forum announcement with a community comment thread, and proactive outreach to high-volume API users. The candidate mentions checking npm/pip download stats to estimate blast radius, and pinning the migration guide at the top of the docs for the first month.

Expect these follow-ups

• How far in advance should the deprecation warning appear before the actual removal?
• What tooling would you add to the v1 SDK to make the migration easier for users?

As asked

You are writing a quick-start guide for an API with a fairly complex authentication flow. How do you design it so a developer who has never touched your product gets a successful API call within ten minutes?

Sample answer outline

A strong answer acknowledges that complex auth is a top drop-off point and proposes either a temporary sandbox token that bypasses OAuth for the quick-start, or a dedicated test-credential flow. They describe sequencing: prereqs list, credential acquisition (with screenshots or CLI commands), the minimal working code snippet, expected output so the developer knows it worked, and a next-steps section. They also mention testing the guide with someone unfamiliar with the product before publishing.

Expect these follow-ups

• How do you test whether your quick-start is actually achieving that ten-minute target?

As asked

What does a production-quality code sample in public developer docs look like to you? Walk me through what you would check before publishing one.

Sample answer outline

A strong answer covers: the code must actually run against the current API version, it handles errors rather than swallowing exceptions, it avoids hardcoded credentials, variable names are descriptive rather than foo/bar, it imports only what is used, and it includes inline comments for any non-obvious step. The candidate also mentions running the sample through a linter, verifying it in a clean environment with only the documented dependencies installed, and adding it to CI so it fails if the API changes.

Expect these follow-ups

• How do you keep dozens of code samples across multiple languages from going stale?