Technical Writer

About the position

As the Technical Writer, you will be responsible for writing, planning, directing, and coordinating the activities required in the development and maintenance of all installation instructions, owners’ manuals, service manuals, and other relevant informational materials that are included with all products and may coordinate workflow for a small department or group.

Responsibilities

• Confer with engineering staff and management to establish technical specifications, determine specific material to be developed for publication, and resolve problems concerned with the publication of the material.
• Analyze engineering developments to determine the need for revisions, corrections, and changes in previously published materials.
• Participate in engineering product meetings for the purpose of identifying key dates and schedules wherein informational materials will be needed to support product introductions.
• Identify necessary materials and resource requirements to Engineering Management as to what will be required to meet the schedule.
• Set standard procedures for gathering data and writing.
• Determine work assignments for technical writing team.
• Edit and review all documents for quality and consistency.
• Work with Engineers and other knowledgeable project support personnel to identify specifics of technical information to be presented in informational materials.
• Select and specify photographs, drawings, sketches, diagrams, and charts to illustrate material.
• Liaise with CAD and Product Literature Department personnel to schedule generation of graphic materials to be included in informational materials.
• Compose test, format, and arrange the content of all information in a professional and technically accurate and legible presentation, easily readable and understandable by the installer and/or end user.
• Write clearly and informatively; edit work for spelling and grammar, vary writing style to meet needs.
• Execute the required steps to complete the tasks to meet the schedule.
• Develop and follow a mandatory routing procedure for review and sign off of all informational printed materials before printing begins.
• Establish and maintain a log of all informational materials produced, revised, and reprinted by the Technical Writing Department for the purpose of ready recall.
• Take pro-active steps to inform Engineering Management when assistance from specific engineers will be required for the review of current informational materials.

Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree in related field
• 5+ years of related work experience or training
• Ability to articulate, transform, and present information received in oral form as well as from knowledge received from personal observations or sketches into a clear and concise document
• Must have effective communication of information in meetings or training sessions as well as professional responses to questions from groups, clients, and the general public
• Mathematical abilities, including the ability to calculate appropriate metric conversion
• Ability to solve practical problems and deal with concrete variables with limited standardization.
• Ability to interpret a variety of instructions furnished in written, oral, diagram, or schedule form
• Effective computer skills, especially MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, Quark, and Adobe InDesign with Adobe Illustrator and Acrobat
• Strong leadership and time management skills to effectively plan and delegate tasks to complete assignments on time