Our ambition is to set a standard of excellence in the industry for technical documentation and documentation practice. This is your chance to be a part of that, as a Technical Author at Canonical.
We have dozens of positions available across the organisation, at all levels from Graduate to Senior Staff. These roles will lead documentation efforts within engineering, business operations, or other areas of the company.
The role of a Technical Author
A product-focused Technical Author is a member of a product engineering team, typically focusing on one product or family of products. You will help the team develop documentation that serves users' needs and contribute to the long‑term success of the project.
A customer‑focused Technical Author works with teams such as Field Engineering, Customer Success, or Support, dealing with users of complex software suites in custom configurations. You will take a responsive approach to documentation problems and develop strong technical and contextual knowledge.
An operations‑focused Technical Author is part of a business team (e.g., Legal, HR, or Talent) and maintains internal documentation such as employee handbooks. You will help improve materials relied upon by hundreds of colleagues and define communication patterns for a growing organization.
You will also be part of Canonical’s documentation practice team, working with other Technical Authors to define excellence and drive resources across the company and the open‑source community.
Location
Fully remote roles open to candidates worldwide.
As a Technical Author you will
Create, maintain, and improve software and other documentation.
Work with team members to help them make effective documentation contributions.
Influence the development of Canonical products and services as an expert user with opinions about function and design.
Engage with user communities to ensure that the documentation meets their needs.
Encourage and support community engagement in and contribution to documentation.
Help standardise the structure, presentation, style and language of content across products.
Collaborate with documentation peers to advance the state of the art at Canonical.
Challenge and advance documentation understanding and best practices as part of a disciplinary team.
A strong candidate
Is an excellent collaborator and communicator.
Cares deeply about functional written communication.
Is a technical writer with a programmer’s mindset, or a programmer with a record of excellent documentation.
Has a record of community engagement in open‑source software, documentation, research, or related disciplines.
Is sympathetic to the needs and challenges of open‑source communities.
Demonstrates technical curiosity and a fascination with software technology.
Has demonstrable documentation skills, insight, and enthusiasm.
Has experience in software development contexts.
Is familiar with Linux, command line, Git, and documentation markup languages such as reStructuredText or MyST.
Holds a BSc/BA degree or equivalent.
Is able to travel twice a year for up to two weeks for events.
Nice‑to‑have skills
Deep technical domain knowledge.
Open‑source community leadership and management.
User‑experience, interaction, or visual design.
What we offer you
We consider geographical location, experience, and performance when shaping compensation worldwide. In addition to base pay, we offer a performance‑driven annual bonus or commission. We provide benefits that reflect our values and ideals and meet local needs.
Distributed work environment with twice‑yearly in‑person team sprints.
Personal learning and development budget of USD 2,000 per year.
Annual compensation review.
Recognition rewards.
Annual holiday leave.
Maternity and paternity leave.
Employee Assistance Programme.
Opportunity to travel to new locations to meet colleagues.
Priority Pass and travel upgrades for long‑haul company events.
Canonical is an equal‑opportunity employer
We are proud to foster a workplace free from discrimination. Diversity of experience, perspectives, and background create a better work environment and better products. Whatever your identity, we will give your application fair consideration.
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