Senior Technical Writer
As a Senior Technical Writer, you will write accurate, engaging, user-friendly documentation that adheres to SpotHero style guidelines.
You will be responsible for ensuring that the documentation for all of our products is clear, correct, and easy to use. We are looking for great writers with strong technical proficiencies who will help our users succeed with our rapidly evolving suite of developer tools. You'll collaborate with our engineers, quality analysts, design and product to write documentation for new and legacy features. For some features you will support the archaeology work to establish exactly how some of our features work. You'll dive in on special projects, authoring new content for the docs and the UI, while planning new processes, standards, and doc site features. You'll be at the leading edge of DevOps and engaging with our wider community.
Who we are: SpotHero is one of Chicago’s hottest tech companies! We’re rapidly growing with the mission of bringing the parking industry into the future through technology. Drivers across the nation use the SpotHero mobile app or website to reserve a convenient, affordable parking on-the-go or in advance, and parking companies rely on us to help them reach new customers while optimizing their business. We connect the dots with cutting-edge technology, delivering value to both sides of this exciting, evolving marketplace.
What kind of person are you?
- Curious and a hungry learner
- A Problem Solver
- Tenacious
- Ability to collaborate
- You own your work
- You are a technical educator
Responsibilities
- Oversee team collaboration with Development, QA, Product Management, and other groups to plan, research, write, and revise printed and online documentation, including general overviews, tutorials, installation/configuration instructions, training class materials, and API documentation.
- Write for a variety of audiences, from non-technical end users to programmers, system administrators, and integrators
- Establish team policies and procedures. Conforming to existing styles, policies, and procedures
- Oversee peer editing and production review work
- Integrate use case and functional data into user documentation and examples
- To support archeology work in our legacy systems to ensure shared understanding
- Help developers and other members of the community who have documentation-related questions.
- Continuously improve SpotHero's documentation site features and user experience in collaboration with engineers, product, design, QA and other technical writers. This may include:
- Onboarding materials both written and video
- APIs both Public and Internal
- User Flows with business reasoning
- Investigating why we do what we do - Archeology digs
- Blog Posts
- Educating others on how to write better documentation
- Support Design work where appropriate
- Plan and lead documentation site feature enhancement initiatives e.g. make SEO much better for our documentation (we use Jira, Confluence and Github)
- Work with UX to identify contextual content/documentation opportunities in the product.
- Produce reports on documentation usage and metadata.
- Contribute to the improvement of team process and style, as well as cross-functional efforts.
- Act as a reviewer of release blog posts and contributor to Spotheros’ onboarding process
- Contribute to the documentation Style Guide
Minimum Qualifications
- Excellent skills in writing, editing, research, and planning
- Understanding of what makes documentation clear and effective
- Very strong analytical skills and ability to operate in a fast-paced environment with evolving project requirements and priorities
- BA/BS in Technical Communication or related discipline, or at least five years of experience in writing complex documentation for web-based software
- Excellent communication and teamwork skills, including willingness and ability to consult with subject matter experts from engineering, support, and product management
- Portfolio of work and/or writing samples
Preferred Qualifications
- A familiarity with API documentation for REST
- A familiarity with working and experimenting with code samples to better understand the needs of API consumers
- Attention to detail with a creative eye
- Ability to efficiently and thoroughly address feedback on published content from both customers and internal support representatives
- Passionate about learning and developing
- Enjoys working as part of a team in a collaborative environment
- Exposure to documentation publishing software
- Exposure to tech comm programs
- Experience using Git on the Linux or Mac command line and developer tools and workflows.
- Experience planning and leading major initiatives such as the launch of new documentation resources, large-scale documentation reviews and overhauls, cross-functional initiatives, etc
What we are offering:
- Career game changer – A truly unique experience to work for a fast growing startup in a role with unlimited potential for growth.
- Excellent benefits – We cover 90% of Medical Premiums, 50% of Dental & Vision Premiums, and offer company sponsored Life Insurance.
- Flexible PTO policy, generous parental leave, and great work/life balance – We value and support each individual team member.
- Fun perks like snacks, catered lunches, happy hours, wellness programs, and SpotHero swag.
- Annual parking stipend (duh – we're a parking company!).
- The opportunity to collaborate with fun, innovative, and passionate people in a casual, yet highly productive atmosphere.
- A workplace recognized as the Startup of the Year by Built in Chicago, a Top Workplace by Chicago Tribune, and one of Chicago’s Best Places to Work for Women Under 35 by Crain’s Chicago Business.
Steps to apply: Please include any GitHub account, LinkedIn profile, and any project that you’re particularly proud of. We love seeing work that others loved working on.
NOTE:
- You must be legally authorized to work in the US. Unfortunately, the company is unable to support sponsorships at this time.