Technical Writer - FilDev docs

role overview

We’re looking for a versatile, well-rounded technical writer and content strategist to help make the next version of the internet easier to build.

As a technical Writer in our team, you will help set and steer the direction of documentation and other content for Protocol Labs during a crucial stage in its development: the on-ramp to widespread adoption of IPFS and Filecoin. This role is both tactical and strategic, and in both the short and the long term, you will be instrumental in Protocol Labs’ efforts to plan, create, organize, and continually refine content for both technical and non-technical audiences.

Day-to-day, you might update existing documentation for accuracy, draft or review documentation on new features, or create new material that makes IPFS and Filecoin easier to understand and use at a general level. More strategically, you might design and implement new documentation or educational resources, conduct research with the broader IPFS and Filecoin community, or work closely with engineering teams (including getting deeply into the code and submitting your own pull requests) to clarify fine details of our work. This is a broad-reaching role because the Protocol Labs audience includes developers and users with many perspectives, needs, and technical proficiencies. 

At this role's broadest level, you will ensure that the entire community has a clear picture of what Protocol Labs’ projects and products are and how to use them for their specific needs by reducing complexity through clear, concise, and accurate communication.

We’re looking for someone who has been in the technical weeds before; you either already understand blockchain or distributed systems, or have enough technical background and interest to dive in and get up to speed on this particular stack.

We’re looking for someone who has been in the technical weeds before; you either already understand blockchain or distributed systems, or have enough technical background and interest to dive in and get up to speed on this particular stack. If you enjoy diving into issues and pull requests to distill complicated concepts into sentences, structures, and diagrams people understand, this job is for you.

responsibilities

1/ You can Lead technical projects from a content perspective. Techniques may include:

• Identifying user and organizational needs through formal interviews, informal conversations, contextual inquiry, workshops, and analytics research
• Identifying content opportunities through exercises such as content audits, comparative analyses, gap analyses, and sitemapping, and make recommendations based on what you discover

2/ You can Deliver and maintain high-quality, user-centered content including:

• Create clear, accessible, and concise content through collaborating with everyone from developers to end users
• Examples might include code documentation, technical guides, API documentation, example code, landing pages, and interface messaging
• Review and provide feedback on pull requests that involve documentation, blog posts, etc, to ensure language is concise, clear, and technically correct
• Be responsible for ensuring the greater team updates readmes, docs, tutorials and comments whenever public-facing APIs or other offerings change
• Incorporate continuous feedback from users, peers, and stakeholders by leading content-focused usability and critique sessions
• Make content generation and iteration work visible and trackable in our shared project management tools, as well as through appropriate use of our existing GitHub repositories

3/ Implement tooling to generate, format, and test documentation including:

• Maintaining, developing, and improving sites such as https://github.com/ipfs/docs (which creates https://docs.ipfs.io/),
• Also, maintaining, developing, and improving sites for Filecoin side:https://docs.filecoin.io/

requirements

• Have demonstrated expertise leading content work with cross-functional, iterative teams on time-sensitive projects
• Have a successful track record in creating documentation or other content to synthesize and simplify technical concepts for technical and non-technical audiences
• Understand the challenges of keeping documentation up to date with improvements in fast-changing, in-development code, and how to write just enough documentation to be helpful
• Have a technical background and demonstrated fluency in distributed computing systems or other technical concepts relevant to our work
• Have strong written and verbal communication skills in both community-facing and internal settings
• Enjoy taking initiative to solve open-ended problems
• Be comfortable enough in code to be able to create, edit, and test documentation-related websites

Bonus points:

• Experience working in or managing open-source communities
• Experience with developer relations or developer support
• Experience with fully remote, distributed organizations
• Familiarity with decentralized building blocks (blockchain, DHTs, smart contracts, p2p networking, etc.

culture & perks

As a distributed team, we hire anywhere in the world, and at various levels of experience (entry, senior, staff). We look for people with unique perspectives and diverse backgrounds.

We have a great benefits package, including parental leave, contributions to your retirement, competitive pay, and unlimited time off. For U.S.-based employees, we also provide platinum-level health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your family.

If you’re passionate about the future of computing and a more democratized internet, we want to talk to you.

about us

Protocol Labs drives breakthroughs in computing to push humanity forward. Protocol Labs is a product-development lab, but behind the protocols and tools we build, behind the research and implementations, are passionate people, teammates, and community members.

Most teams in the Protocol Labs Network are fully distributed and work remotely around the world. Engineers, researchers, and operators work in the open to improve the internet — humanity's most important technology — as we explore new advances at the intersection of many exciting fields (web3, cryptography, networks, distributed systems) and cultures (startups, research, open-source, distributed work).