Staff Technical Writer

Job Description

About the Role

Title: Staff Technical Writer

Bangalore,India

Databases are the beating heart of every business in the world

Cockroach Labs is the creator of CockroachDB, the most highly evolved cloud-native, distributed SQL database on the planet that scales fast, survives anything, and thrives anywhere. We created CockroachDB to unshackle teams from the constraints of their database. Join us on our mission to enable every developer to build world-changing applications!

Cockroach Labs has an office-first approach, with Roachers coming into one of our offices on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and working flexibly the rest of the week. While we’ve learned valuable lessons working remotely, nothing can replace the connection, creativity, and fun that occurs when Roachers get together and we are committed to fostering a workplace that encourages collaboration and allows us all to do our best work.

About the Role

We’re seeking a highly experienced technical writer to join our world-class Documentation team.

As a member of this team, you’ll create outstanding content that helps our customers succeed. You will develop and maintain documentation spanning the product areas of Security, Deployment, and Operations. You’ll plan and drive special projects, pair with other writers, and collaborate on projects with engineering teams, support, and product management.

Your wide-ranging experience and technical proficiency will enable you to collaborate with other highly talented colleagues to deliver comprehensive reference documentation, and instructive tutorials and how-to guides. At the same time, we’ll value your insightful feedback as we seek to continuously improve our product and processes

You Will

Develop technical expertise in CockroachDB, expand your skills in related technologies, and learn the perspectives of our users as they learn to configure and use CockroachDB and troubleshoot and solve problems..

Document feature overviews and provide guidance for enterprise architects, operators, and admins as they evaluate CockroachDB.

Explain CockroachDB security concepts, features, and best-practice guidance.

Guide operators and admins to make the best use of CockroachDB’s features to maintain and administer clusters in self-hosted environments and CockroachDB Cloud.

Enable users to efficiently integrate CockroachDB with their organization’s existing infrastructure, security policies, and operations practices.

Write best-in-class documentation that meets our users’ needs, including: explanations, tutorials, references, and how-tos. Provide clear explanations of complex topics and features in collaboration with engineers and product managers.

Help define and evolve the team’s processes, tooling, and style conventions.

Collaborate with other teams such as Engineering, Product, Training, Support, and Customer Success to keep our documentation up-to-date, effective, and user-centric.

The Expectations

In your first 30 days, you’ll follow a custom onboarding plan authored by your manager, which includes Cockroach University course material, review of internal documentation, information sessions about our product and company, hands-on time with the product, and discussions with your manager and colleagues. We believe that it’s important to take this first month to become familiar with our technology and our company, so you will use CockroachDB throughout this period and beyond.

During this initial onboarding, you will develop enough expertise to begin your first documentation project. You will also start to review and edit documentation written by other technical writers on the team.

Within about three months, you’ll be fully integrated into the team, and work with one or two product managers and engineering teams to learn their product area and strategic focus. You will also begin contributing to efforts related to documentation conventions, processes, and tools to help increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the team.

You Have

5-8 recent years of experience producing documentation for technical audiences.

Experience using most of the following: Unix/Linux systems, public cloud services, containers and orchestration, database-specific technologies, SaaS tools for developers, Git, and docs-as-code workflows.

Experience with tools, concepts, and best practices related to networking, security, DevOps, and infrastructure as code.

Software development or system administration experience.

Extensive experience related to the listed job responsibilities of authoring and collaborating on documentation

Org Structure: Cockroach Labs has a centralized Docs Team in the Education Department, which is part of the Product Division.

Collaboration: Docs team members are embedded with product engineering teams and work closely with product managers and engineering leads to plan and execute docs for their product areas. The Docs Team meets weekly to discuss matters of shared interest. Writers also rotate membership on sub-teams focused on style and release notes. Engineers and product managers provide subject-matter expertise and technical and reviews. Writers provide peer review for each other.

Growth: Team management maintains an internal Competencies table to provide a shared basis for team member leveling and to enable managers to focus on growth opportunities with each writer.

Culture: Cockroach Labs continually works to foster an environment of respect among team members, with open communication, high achievement, and work-life balance. Within the company, the Docs team is valued for the support our content and expertise provides to the business.

Our Benefits

Paid parental leave with baby bucks

Flexible PTO

Competitive Health Insurance Coverage (for you and your dependents!)

Cockroach Labs is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer building a diverse and inclusive workforce. If you need additional accommodations to feel comfortable during your interview process, please email us at accessibility@cockroachlabs.com.