DITA OT Developer / DITA Content Strategist
Location – Ireland
Hybrid work
Employment type – Full time.
Job Description
Job Summary –
The DITA OT Developer is responsible for developing and maintaining DITA Document Type Definitions (DTDs) and DITA Open Toolkit-based output plugins using XSLT and Java. This includes XSL-FO-based PDF deliverables, online HTML deliverables, product-integrated WebHelp, and XML conversion utilities.
This role's core focus designs and develops DITA-OT solutions for integration into authoring and additional rendition environments.
As a member of a cross-functional development team, DITA-OT Developers collaborate with business operations groups, IT groups, and structured authoring teams.
Years of experience needed – 5+ Years of experience
Technical Skills:
Core DITA & XML Skills
* DITA authoring concepts: topics, maps, specialization, constraints, reuse strategies.
* XML fundamentals: schemas (DTD, XSD), namespaces, validation.
* XSLT & XPath: customizing and writing transformations for DITA-OT outputs.
* DITA-OT plugins: creating and maintaining custom plugins for specialized publishing needs.
* DITA specialization: extending or restricting base DITA for domain-specific needs.
Programming & Markup
* Java & Ant: understanding DITA-OT's build framework, writing extensions.
* HTML5 & CSS3: styling web outputs.
* Regular expressions: text manipulation and validation tasks.
Publishing & Output Customization
* PDF publishing: PDF2 plugin, XSL-FO, or alternative PDF processors (Antenna House, RenderX, FOP).
* HTML publishing: customizing HTML5, CHM, WebHelp, or site outputs.
* Multi-channel publishing: knowledge of EPUB, Eclipse Help, Markdown, or custom outputs.
Tools & Environment
* DITA authoring tools: Oxygen XML Author/Editor, FrameMaker, Arbortext.
* DITA-OT build management: command line, Ant scripts, Gradle tasks.
* Source control: Git, SVN, or similar for managing content and customizations.
* Continuous Integration (CI/CD): integrating DITA-OT builds with Jenkins, Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, etc.
Quality & Testing
* DITA content validation: ensuring content adheres to DITA rules and constraints.
* Unit testing for transformations: validating XSLT and plugin changes.
* Performance optimization: tuning builds for large document sets.
Soft Skills
* Analytical thinking: diagnosing publishing issues in transformations.
* Collaboration: working with writers, architects, and tool teams.
* Documentation: writing clear technical notes on customization and plugins.
* Problem-solving mindset: debugging complex build pipelines.