Sr. Technical Writer Job Description

Get the Senior Technical Writer job description template we used to scale a content team to 45 writers and editors. Learn how Workello helps content teams hire higher quality, more affordable writers with less effort.

Bojan Maric

Jan 16, 2022

Bojan Maric

HR Leader

I've hired hundreds of people and currently COO of ContentDistribution.com managing and developing a team of twenty five incredible creatives.

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Written by Bojan Maric

Sr. Technical Writer Job Description Template

We’re searching for an experienced and ambitious Senior Technical Writer who will work alongside our engineers and developers to gain a deep understanding of our products and services and turn that knowledge into user-friendly technical documentation.

Some of your primary obligations will include reviewing and updating existing technical documents and creating highly effective content (how-to guides, references, manuals, or instructions) for our end users. You may also need to contribute to writing customer-facing content and promo materials about new products and features or expert content for our website.

Responsibilities

Obtain in-depth knowledge of our current line of products and/or services and understand future product direction by attending cross-functional meetings with other team members/testing specific features
Provide feedback to testers/developers about the usability/features of the product
Create comprehensive and easy-to-understand technical documentation (Getting Started guides, how-to guides, manuals, etc.) for a wide range of products/services
Update or rewrite existing content based on project requirements
Study user feedback for improvement opportunities
Collaborate with other teams to create instructional customer-facing promotional content for new releases and subject-matter-expert content for our blog
Create and manage databases of reference materials (design specifications, usability tests, etc.)
Oversee the work of junior technical writers

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in English, Business, Data Science, Computer Science, or another relevant technical field
[XY] years of experience as a Technical Writer
Ability to understand and explain complex technical concepts concisely
Portfolio of previous technical writing work
Experience in using Jira/GitHub/Confluence/Markdown
Ability to work unsupervised and successfully shift focus to changing priorities

Salary Ranges for Sr. Technical Writers

Senior Technical Writers’ salary ranges vary depending on the candidate’s expertise, skills, certifications, and more. Here’s how the average annual salary of a Senior Technical Writer varies across the States, according to Glassdoor:

City	Entry-Level	Median	Top 10%
San Francisco, CA	$98,000	$124,000	$157,000
New York, NY	$71,000	$101,000	$144,000
Seattle, WA	$91,000	$122,000	$164,000
Dallas, TX	$71,000	$92,000	$120,000
Los Angeles, CA	$72,000	$96,000	$129,000
Portland, OR	$74,000	$95,000	$123,000
Austin, TX	$72,000	$95,000	$124,000
Atlanta, GA	$64,000	$85,000	$112,000
Nashville, TN	$44,000	$65,000	$98,000
Tampa Bay, FL	$67,000	$90,000	$120,000

Creating a Sr. Technical Writer Job Description That Attracts the Best Candidates

You don’t need to start writing the job description for your ad from scratch. Our templates are a great starting point, but to ensure the best results, you need to analyze the specific needs of your company and list the responsibilities and expectations tied to this role as clearly as possible.

It’s crucial to explain all the responsibilities that the writer you’re hiring will carry and elaborate on each task they will have to deal with daily if you hope to make the hiring process more successful. Being specific, clear, and transparent will help the potential candidate understand everything the role will encompass and avoid any misunderstandings later on. You will benefit from this approach because the ad will attract better, more qualified candidates genuinely interested in working at your company.

Being more specific applies to all kinds of information your job ad should contain—for example, make sure to specify what certifications you’d like the ideal candidate to have, such as:

Certified Technical Professional (CTP)
Certified Professional Technical Communicator-Expert (CPTC)
Master Project Manager (MPM)

Including details about the required word count and potential deadlines the Senior Technical Writer will have to meet is also beneficial.

Similar Roles to Sr. Technical Writer

There are many job ads under similar titles out there. To avoid attracting the wrong candidates, look at the table below and make sure you’re posting the ad for the position your company truly needs—choose the right job description template based on the right seniority level or area of expertise:

Get More Sr. Technical Writer Job Descriptions Inspiration

Need more inspiration to finalize your perfect Senior Technical Writer job ad? Take a look at a few job description examples of how other companies sell themselves when recruiting for the same position on the most popular online job boards:

Learn how to lower your content cost by 50% and hire top talent

Why You Should Test Technical Content Professionals Before Hiring Them

Hiring skilled members for your content team has never been an easy task, but the challenge is even bigger if you’re looking for an experienced technical writer or editor. It’s easy for candidates to amp up their resumes and portfolios with niche-specific samples that have been heavily edited by third-party collaborators, and you’ll be none the wiser about the quality of their work until you hire them. The only way to gauge their actual skills is to add pre-employment assessments to your hiring process.

Testing candidates is impossible without skill assessment software to keep everything organized and under control. Without it, you’ll have to communicate with candidates, send tests, collect and grade them, and keep track of what stage of the hiring process each candidate is in.

Workello is high-volume recruiting software that takes care of the entire process for you. After you sign up for free, you’ll find the perfect candidate by taking the following steps:

Launch your pre-configured hiring funnel in under 3 minutes
Add a Workello link to your job postings on all job boards you use
Wait for applications to come your way
Send tests to applicants to test their technical writing skills
Reject, interview, and hire candidates from your single-page dashboard

Test Candidates for Technical Roles Effortlessly With Workello

You can use Workello to test technical writers in any industry. The platform is not for technical writing only—you can use it to test content writers and SEO writers as well. With Workello, you can manage candidates through the entire selection process without ever leaving your dashboard. Use Workello’s free trial to sign up and see for yourself how fast you will identify the top 1% of technical writer candidates.

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