Elsevier is looking for a Technical Writer to join a fast-paced and innovative team that is developing a cloud-based enterprise platform that will be supporting 10K+ users. In this role, you will be responsible for:

• Customer support onboarding materials (i.e. user guide, etc)
• Contributions supporting go-to-market requirements
• UX technical writing

About You

You are a high-energy, start-up enthusiast crossed with a professional, polished communicator. You love learning about new technologies and industries, and love teaching what you have learned to others even more. You are naturally driven to become the expert in whatever product or space you are tasked to document. You care passionately about developing useful, accurate content, and have a knack for knowing the questions a user will ask before they do. You don”t wait for the information to come to you, you go out and get it…
Responsibilities

• Deliver detailed user guides which will be used by the support team and that will also be embedded in our cloud-based enterprise platform.
• Establish the user assistance practice and authoring tools/systems that can output to multiple targets such as: Text/PDF guides, HTML micro-sites from the same source material.
• Work independently to gather information from Ux designers, software developers and product management about features/workflows, and create (helpful, interesting, well-organized, consistent, high-quality) user assistance content from scratch.
• Write concise, persuasive, on-task content for the user interface that keeps users engaged and reduces their potential confusion by reducing user errors.
• Think outside the box and imagine new learning flow/experiences or techniques that can be applied to enterprise web-application. Your techniques create a cohesive experience for initial learning and then scaffold a novice to become an efficient expert user.
• Use the product, test each procedure and workflow, become an expert user, and advocate of our cloud-based enterprise platform. If something seems difficult to document, it’s probably difficult to use and understand. Speak up when you see a problem that prevents our product from being awesome!

Job Requirements
• 5+ years of technical writing experience in enterprise software.
• Excellent written and verbal English language skills.
• Excellent content planning and organization skills.
• The ability to act as information designer, project manager, writer, editor, and publisher.
• The ability to quickly learn complex concepts and technologies and clearly explain them to others.
• Knowledge or experience with creating documentation in an Agile development environment.
• Knowledge or experience with structured authoring, preferably using DITA and Oxygen XML Editor.
• Knowledge of authoring documentation in Markdown
• Knowledge or experience with source control systems, preferably using GitHub.
• Knowledge or experience with XML, HTML, and other web-development standards related to technical documentation
• Knowledge or experience with bug tracking systems, preferably using JIRA.
You Get Bonus Points For…
• Previous experience documenting a web authoring/writing application.
• Previous experience building on-boarding experience for new users

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Human Computer Interaction or Communications and 5+ years of content/documentation experience in the software industry

Can you tell me a little bit about the project that this contractor will be working on and what is creating the need for this position?
• This candidate provides the user guide that will be hosted on their support site
• This is information their internal team uses to support external customers to the site

So that suppliers can paint a good picture to candidates, can you walk me through what a typical day might look like?
• Most of the team is located in Philadelphia, where this position is based
• This candidate would be the only tech writer
• Manager is based in SFO
• Design and QA team is based in Philadelphia
• Engineers are based in Salt Lake City
• 1 o’clock EST stand up with team in SLC
• 25% of the time in meetings understanding feature
• 75% of the time is dedicated to technical documentation

Does your team work standard core hours or does that vary?
• core business hours
• 9 – 5:30

What would you say are the TOP 3 must-have skills you’re looking for? (Measurable skills, technologies, etc.)
1.) Enterprise web applications writing experience
2.) Bootstrap
3.) Previous experience as the sole technical writer on a team

How many years of experience are you looking for? As you start to go through resumes, what would stand out to you as the BEST candidate versus an AVERAGE candidate?
• 5+ year of experience

What date range works best to take a look at candidates and get feedback out to suppliers?
• Traveling to Montreal for conferences next week but can review resumes

Once you pick a few possible candidates for interviews, what date range works best to set up those interviews?
• 1st Phone interview with the manager, intro to the product and team
• 2nd Phone interview to review writing samples (provide to Billy before)
• In person interview with 1-2 team members