Joe Karlsson
Principal Developer Marketing Manager
I've spent 15 years making complex data systems click for developers - through talks, docs, demos, content, and building things that probably shouldn't exist. I build and run DevRel functions at data companies, embedded across Sales, Product, and Engineering, with a track record in organic growth, developer activation, and pipeline influence.
15+
Years in Tech
100+
Conference Talks
5
Data Companies
cat experience.md
Principal Developer Marketing Manager
CData
2026 - Present
Remote
- Lead developer marketing for CData's managed MCP platform - the layer that connects AI agents to live enterprise data - owning developer growth end to end
- Own the developer growth engine: technical docs, content, SEO and AEO, and how the platform gets positioned to the engineers actually building on it
- Scaling the organic developer adoption already forming around Connect AI on purpose - find what is working, then do a lot more of it
- Partner with Product, Engineering, and Docs to keep the developer experience tight and make CData the obvious pick for wiring AI agents up to enterprise data
- Build the demos, guides, and content that show developers how to solve their actual problem instead of pitching at them
- Stay in the code - I write, build, and ship alongside the team so the marketing holds up to the engineers it's aimed at
Head of Developer Relations
CloudQuery (now env0)
2024 - 2026
Remote
- Built the Developer Relations function from scratch - sole owner of content, community, docs, events, and video; focused on making developers genuinely successful first, business results followed
- Rewrote docs end-to-end: Quickstart completions went from zero to 25/week, docs traffic grew 302%, and docs became a measurable activation channel
- Grew organic traffic 4x in under 3 months (~1,350 → 5,600+ visitors/week); two target keywords reached #1
- Monthly MQLs hit 239% of target; content became a measurable pipeline channel, with organic readers converting to trials and closed deals with no paid touchpoints
- Published 80+ technical posts across cloud security, IaC, and data engineering; ran a webinar series, YouTube channel, and spoke at conferences
- Embedded across Engineering, Product, and Sales - attended daily standups and merged 480+ PRs directly into production
- Replicated the content playbook at env0.com post-merger: +106% organic traffic in 3 weeks
Senior Developer Advocate
Tinybird
2023 - 2024
Remote
- Partnered closely with the Sales team on pre-sales support and customer demos - integrated with prospects' existing tech stacks to build tailored demos that showed exactly how Tinybird fit their architecture
- Built real-time technical integrations for demos and customer proof-of-concepts: fraud detection system on GCP/BigQuery/Kafka (33% reduction in fraudulent transactions); BigQuery IoT optimization for a trucking firm (40% compute cost reduction, 30% faster data retrieval)
- Produced technical content, videos, and webinars covering real-time analytics use cases for a developer audience
- Built community through workshops, online forums, and conference representation
Senior Developer Advocate
SingleStore
2021 - 2023
Remote
- Led content and video production strategy for SingleStore's developer audience - technical tutorials, conference talks, and demos targeting developers migrating from MySQL and PostgreSQL
- Built co-marketing partnerships with cloud providers and tooling partners, coordinating joint content, webinars, and conference activations with their marketing and DevRel teams
- Planned and executed developer conference presence end-to-end: talk submissions, booth strategy, event logistics, and post-event content amplification
- Worked cross-functionally with Engineering, Documentation, and Sales to align content with product launches, maintain technical accuracy, and support pre-sales needs
Developer Advocate
MongoDB
2019 - 2021
Remote
- Keynoted at MongoDB World and led global conference event strategy; when COVID hit, pivoted to lead MongoDB's digital growth strategy across Twitch, YouTube, and social - driving developer awareness and product adoption through an entirely new channel mix
- Built memorable technical demos to showcase MongoDB features in creative, engaging ways: IoT kitty litter box, IoT digital graffiti board, and dozens of other projects that drove community growth and product awareness
- Owned MongoDB's live stream and video production, building a 25K+ TikTok following; ranked #1 on "Must-Follow Developers on TikTok"
- Played a key role in defining and standardizing MongoDB developer best practices - authored canonical guides and videos on schema design, aggregation, and Atlas that became the reference point for the ecosystem; published across MongoDB Developer Hub, The New Stack, and Medium (MongoDB Schema Design Best Practices →)
Front End Technical Lead
Best Buy
2017 - 2019
Minneapolis, MN
- Led a cross-functional team of 10 engineers, QA, and product on one of the top 3 largest eCommerce sites in North America - a platform handling millions of users and thousands of requests per second
- Owned Account Home for bestbuy.com end-to-end: drove full redesign and implementation partnering closely with UX, product, and backend teams
- Engineered AI-driven chatbot using NLP and ML that reduced customer support call volume by 25%
Full-Stack JavaScript Instructor
DevLeague
2015 - 2017
Honolulu, HI
- Taught full-stack JavaScript at one of the top 10 coding bootcamps worldwide
- Developed curriculum, led workshops, and mentored students into engineering roles at local and national companies
cat skills.md
Languages
JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Go, Rust, SQL
Databases
MongoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, ClickHouse, Redis, Elasticsearch, SingleStore
Cloud & Data
AWS, GCP, Azure, BigQuery, Snowflake, Kafka, Airflow
AI & Automation
LLM APIs, AI Workflow Automation, Prompt Engineering, AI-assisted Content Pipelines, Sales Enablement Automation
Frontend
React, Redux, Astro, Tailwind CSS, D3.js
DevRel & Marketing
Technical Writing, Conference Speaking, Content Strategy, SEO, Conversion Optimization, Sales Enablement, Marketing Analytics, Community, Webinars
cat highlights.md
- TEDx Speaker: "The Art of Computer Science" (delivered as TEDx talk and keynote at multiple conferences)
- Ranked #1 on "10 Must-Follow Developers on TikTok"; 25K+ followers, 844K+ likes
- Hackathon organizer: co-organized "Stupid Shit No One In Hawaii Needs" (2016), sponsored by GitHub & Frontend Masters
- Published in The New Stack, MongoDB Developer Hub, Tinybird blog, Medium, DEV Community
cat writing.md
Database: Conceptual
- Database Partitioning vs. Sharding: What's the Difference?
SingleStore
- A Step-by-Step Guide to Build a Real-Time Dashboard
Tinybird
- From SQL to NoSQL: A Gentle Intro for Devs
Conf42 JavaScript 2020
- MongoDB Schema Design Best Practices
MongoDB
Database: Deep Technical
- How to Use SingleStore as a Key-Value Store
SingleStore
- Using Bloom Filter Indexes for Real-Time Text Search in ClickHouse
Tinybird - ghost-written
- Why and How We Built Our Own Full-Text Search Engine with ClickHouse
CloudQuery
- How We Handle Billion-Row ClickHouse Inserts with UUID Range Bucketing
CloudQuery
Cloud & Data Pipelines
Webinars & Conference Talks
- What is Apache Arrow?
CloudQuery
- Databases and DevOps w/ Rizel Scarlett from GitHub
SingleStore
Case Studies
- Unicorne + CloudQuery Case Study
CloudQuery
- Tempus: Multi-Cloud Asset Inventory
CloudQuery
DevRel & Strategy
- What I Learned Running DevRel in 2026
joekarlsson.com
Technical Documentation
- CloudQuery Platform Documentation
CloudQuery - sole author
ls projects/
Secure AI Data Pipelines
End-to-end reference architecture for building secure AI data pipelines. Built for conference talks and customer demos; shows how to move data safely into AI workflows at scale.
bechdel.io
Bechdel Test script analyzer; a collaborative digital humanities project with my sister. Parses film scripts to test for gender representation.
Homelab
20+ self-hosted services running on bare metal and VMs: Proxmox, Unraid, TrueNAS, Jellyfin, Home Assistant, Authentik, Immich, and more.
cat education.md
Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science
Gustavus Adolphus College
Minors: Art History, Math
2008 - 2012
GPA: 3.5