Senior Technical Writer
WatchGuard embraces a Flexible Work Philosophy. Most of our employees can choose to work from the office, at home, or any combination of the two. We’ve built a global workforce of outstanding team members and a flexible culture built on trust, collaboration, and belonging.
This position can be located in Toronto, ON, Canada, Seattle, WA, USA, or remote within a North American time zone
About the Role
Technical Writers contribute to the development and production of Help content, UI text, API documentation, integration and setup guides, training materials, and knowledge base articles in support of all WatchGuard products. We work collaboratively and closely with software engineers, UX designers, product owners, program managers, trainers, and the technical support team to deliver documentation that helps customers use WatchGuard’s cloud-based SaaS products and hardware devices.
The Team
As a full-time Senior Technical Writer at WatchGuard, you'll join a distributed team of dedicated writers and trainers based in Seattle, Toronto, Bilbao, Noida, and remote locations.
We thrive in a fast-paced environment and know that our work is highly valued by our colleagues and customers and has a real impact in the world. The content we create helps our customers protect their users, data, and networks from attack and respond to breaking threats such as ransomware, viruses, and malware. WatchGuard understands the importance of high-quality technical documentation and the WatchGuard Help Center receives thousands of page views every day.
About You
You’re an experienced Technical Writer who is passionate about writing content that helps readers solve real-world problems. You’ve worked closely with Agile development teams and UX designers, and thrive in a fast-paced environment where your documentation is key to customer’s success. You’re familiar with tracking software such as Jira, effectively manage your own work, and can balance priorities across multiple projects.
You love to get hands on with complex technology and figure out how it works, and you’re relentless in tracking down the information your readers need to know. You become an expert in the products and feature areas you document and know the best way to explain them to your readers.
You enjoy collaboration, giving and getting feedback, and working in a supportive team setting. Although you have a favorite Style Guide, you can adapt your writing to new rules, and different audiences.
You have experience reviewing and editing other writer’s content, and providing guidance on grammar, style, structure, and tone. You get excited by content architecture challenges where platform features might impact multiple sets of product documentation, and work well with teammates to find solutions.
You’re comfortable working with cross-functional teams, advocating for your readers in meetings and demos, and can drive complex documentation projects to completion with minimal supervision. You love to learn, share your knowledge, and mentor newer writers.
A Day in the Life of a Technical Writer at WatchGuard
No day as a WatchGuard Technical Writer is the same. We juggle short and long-term projects with competing deadlines, and manage a backlog of documentation tasks in Jira.
To start your day, you could write an article to explain a breaking issue or attend a sprint demo or grooming session. You might log in to WatchGuard Cloud to explore new functionality that will release next week, or install new software in our Writer’s lab. Next, you jump on a call to discuss a new feature with engineers and the product owner so you can start to write online Help content in Flare.
Later, you could collaborate with other writers on improvements to WatchGuard Help Center or review a UX design for an upcoming feature. Then, you’ll refine your Help topics in preparation for our weekly Help Center update, check files into source control and update Jira tasks for the work you completed.
Your First Week
- We’ll help you get settled in and introduce you to the tools you’ll use to create documentation at WatchGuard, such as Madcap Flare, Jira, Confluence, and Perforce.
- You’ll start to learn about the different WatchGuard products and the content we create.
- You’ll familiarize yourself with the WatchGuard Style Guide and do some copy editing or make updates to existing Help or KB documentation.
Your First Month
- You’ll complete training on WatchGuard products and start to contribute content to our weekly Help Center builds to document new or updated features.
- You’ll review and copy edit Integration Guides, edit and publish KB articles, and work on Release Notes and What’s New content.
- You’ll work closely with another writer to review a UX design for an upcoming feature and suggest text improvements in Figma.
Your First Year
- After a year, you completely own the documentation for a product or feature area and keep it up to date when we release new software updates.
- You copy edit and provide developmental feedback on other writers’ work and help them to follow our Style Guide rules and best practices.
- You lead complex documentation projects, drive improvements to our documentation processes and tools, and help to shape the direction of our documentation deliverables.
Compensation
The base salary range for this position is $80,000 - $105,000 USD per year, exclusive of benefits. This position is also eligible for a bonus of 5% of the base salary. Your base salary compensation will be based on your individual skills, education, and experience. Please keep in mind that the above range is the full base salary range for this role; hiring at the maximum of the range is not typical in order to allow for future salary growth.
U.S. Benefits
· Under our Flexible Work Philosophy, most employees can work from an office, at home, or any combination of the two.
· Comprehensive benefits plan including medical, dental, life, vision, disability, and life insurance
· Healthcare FSA
· FSA with employer contribution
· 13 holidays, including a floating holiday, Juneteenth, and your birthday
· 15 days of paid annual leave
· 9 days of paid sick time
· Paid parental leave
· 401(k) with employer match
Other Perks
· Education assistance program
· Dependent Care FSA match
· Adoption assistance
· Fertility care support
· Backup care for family and pets
· A growing network of employee resource groups
· Employee referral program
· Virtual boot camp
· Employee Assistance Program
Why Work for WatchGuard?
WatchGuard is a global leader in network security and intelligence, advanced endpoint protection, multi-factor authentication, and secure Wi-Fi. Our award-winning products and services are trusted worldwide by more than 18,000 security resellers and service providers to protect more than 250,000 customers. Our technology keeps our customers ahead of increasingly sophisticated hackers and has fueled record revenues at WatchGuard.
WatchGuard is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, with team members working remotely and in offices worldwide.
Our company culture places an intense focus on our customers and employees. From the newest employee to our CEO, you'll find that each person at WatchGuard embodies our Core Values: Accountability, Community, Belonging, Action, Innovation, and Customer-Centric. Learn more about our company culture at www.watchguard.com/wgrd-careers.
WatchGuard provides equal employment opportunities for all qualified employees, regardless of their race, color, national origin, religion, ancestry, creed, pregnancy, age, sex, sexual orientation (including gender expression or identity), marital status, mental or physical disability, honorably discharged veteran or military status or any other category protected by federal, state or local laws. Our equal employment opportunity (or EEO) policy focuses solely on the talent, hard work, contributions, and actual results achieved by each WatchGuard employee and on the potential of employment candidates to make such contributions. We consider focusing on an employee's protected characteristics rather than on talent, hard work, and actual work results to violate our EEO policy. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we are committed to a diverse workforce. WatchGuard participates in E-verify.
WatchGuard is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities in our job application procedures. Please let us know if you need assistance or accommodation due to a disability.