Technical Writer
Remote / Telford 2-3 days per week
6 months
Umbrella only
As a technical writer, you will develop technical content to help us improve the way we share technical knowledge and expertise. You will work alongside content designers, interaction designers, user researchers, product managers and business analysts to create documentation and technical information. You will be comfortable working across multiple teams, while writing on a range of different subjects, from the highly technical to the more general. You'll be part of our active and supportive design community.
- Become familiar with existing technical content and make recommendations on how it can be improved.
- Understand the GOV.UK style and align content appropriately.
- Work with technical and process experts to get an in-depth understanding of relevant programmes, projects and topics.
- Collaborate with user researchers to develop a detailed knowledge of user needs.
- Run workshops and collaborate with technical and design colleagues.
- Work with content designers to ensure there's a consistent approach to content in the user journey.
- Contribute to the technical writer community across government.
- Write and maintain documentation including information about APIs and security.
- Ensure that documentation meets user needs for all user profiles.
- Help to plan and attend user research and feedback relevant information to the development team.
- Attend user research and incorporate design changes into the technical content
- Work with the main platform team on how areas like authentication should be included in the documentation, and overlapping areas of content use
- Work at a strategic level so the team can give more support to third party software engineers; ensure that docs carry the vision, goals and API release roadmap so vendors can plan accordingly
- Ensure there is a clear protocol in place for how software vendors receive comms
- Consider how to provide help and answers to developers
- Work with policy and subject matter experts to stay aware of any policy or tax changes, and communicate those to the relevant audiences.
Key skills
- At least a basic understanding of HTML and CSS
- Extensive experience of technical writing for the web, with proven ability to create content that is accessible and usable for the target audience. An understanding of usability and interaction design.
- Experience of needs analysis - be able to take existing content and identify gaps and overlaps
awareness of user research methods and practice - Proven experience in using metrics and user feedback to define/refine content
- Experience working within agile teams
- Experience leading workshops, collaborative design or pair writing sessions.
- Detailed understanding of Systems Life Cycles, in particular the requirements and analysis phases.
