Are you a technical writer -Want to work with amazing people and great team- Come join us
We’re offering a unique opportunity to take part in one of the most exciting changes to affect the technology industry: the move to the cloud.
As Technical Writer in Canonical’s Launchpad team you’ll find the best way to ensure that users and developers of our software understand its benefits and how to use it. Whether it’s traditional documentation, screen casts or blog posts, you’ll find it easy to choose the right medium and you’ll have all the skills necessary to produce compelling, involving and effective content.
You’ll thrive in a rapidly changing environment where you’ll be expected to grasp new concepts quickly, develop an intimate understanding of three or four products simultaneously and determine the day to day shape of your own work.
A skilled writer, you’ll excel at finding the right information from your research and then communicating it with a casual confidence that puts people at ease and, most importantly, leaves them with the understanding they need to be effective.
Reporting to the team’s Product Manager, you’ll work as part of a fun-loving, highly skilled, global development team who produce tools including Launchpad, MAAS and Bazaar. You’ll share our love of hard work and our passion for free software, Ubuntu and the cloud.
Key responsibilities and accountabilities
- Explain our products through traditional documentation, screencasts, podcasts and any other appropriate method.
- Help ensure community and developer engagement with our platforms by documenting APIs and communicating the benefits of our various offerings.
- Tell the story of the products we develop, through compelling blog posts and white papers.
- Speak directly to the communities who use and develop our software in order to plan how you can best cater to their needs.
Required skills and experience
- Your written English is well crafted, compelling and fun. You care about how you write, as much as what you write. You’ve produced end-user documentation, developer documentation, blog posts and white papers. What’s more, you enjoy doing it.
- You have at least five years’ experience as technical writer, whether that’s professionally or as a consistent contributor to open source projects.
- You’re smart: you find no problem in learning and owning a new concept.
- When you speak, you find an instant rapport with your conversational partner or audience, and have no trouble in pitching your message appropriately.
- When you listen, you ask all the right questions and can use the answers to create content that is appropriate to your audience and the information you need to communicate.
- You live and breathe open source technology. You know the industry, understand the community and share the ideals. You know your OpenStack from your Intel, your ARM from your aaS and your Bugzilla from your Git.
- You’re equally comfortable dealing with people in person, by phone, over email or using IRC and other remote communication tools.
- You are willing to travel internationally, for periods of one or two weeks and occasionally longer, for conferences, developer-oriented meetings and sprints.
Desirable skills and experience
- You’ve worked as part of team building cloud-related technologies or developer tools.
- You use Ubuntu and are familiar with Launchpad and Bazaar.
- You have a familiarity with one or more of the following:
- IaaS platforms such as OpenStack, AWS, Eucalyptus
- Ubuntu Server, particularly in cloud contexts
- ARM server
- distributed version control systems
- a form of Linux packaging, such as .deb or .rpm
- Python development
- You have taken an active role in an open source software project and understand the dynamics, demands and constraints of working in a distributed community of volunteer and paid developers.
- You’ve worked as part of a distributed team and can demonstrate the self-motivation and discipline required in such an environment.
Apply online, if you have any questions drop by #launchpad
Tags: jobs, launchpad, technical writer
