Technical Writer

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

19d•$97,000 - $171,000

About The Position

Zipline is seeking a Technical Writer to create and maintain clear, accurate service documentation that helps technicians maintain aircraft and equipment safely and consistently. Initial projects will focus on maintenance documentation for the Droid, Dock, and related site equipment. Depending on changing priorities, the role may also develop troubleshooting guides, service bulletins, and temporary revisions for other systems. The Technical Writer works with engineering, maintenance, operations, and other technical writers to research, validate, review, and publish content. The role involves engaging directly with hardware and service teams, asking precise questions, resolving gaps in source material, and staying involved through publication. The writer will also help move documentation from MadCap Flare to a GitHub-based workflow, with reusable content that can scale as Zipline grows.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in technical communication, English, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Experience writing and maintaining technical documentation for complex hardware, software, or operational systems; provide work samples showing clear, accurate instructions.
Strong writing and editing skills, with the ability to make complex information clear and easy to follow.
Ability to learn unfamiliar systems from technical source material, observation, and conversations with subject matter experts, then verify details before publication.
Care with safety, applicability, revision control, and change management, with sound judgment about when a technical question must be resolved before release.
Ability to manage documentation projects, coordinate reviews and priorities across teams, and adapt to structured authoring and publishing tools such as GitHub or Markdown.

Responsibilities

Own assigned manuals and procedures from initial research through release and ongoing maintenance, keeping them accurate as hardware, software, and service processes change.
Write maintenance procedures, inspections, troubleshooting guidance, and system descriptions, making safety information, applicability, tools, parts, and prerequisites easy to find.
Research engineering source material, observe maintenance work, and interview subject matter experts; resolve conflicting information and confirm technical accuracy before publication.
Coordinate reviews, approvals, and release dependencies; track decisions and revisions, communicate blockers, and follow each change through publication.
Use field feedback and change requests to improve documentation, prioritizing updates with partners by safety, operational impact, and release timing.
Organize content, terminology, navigation, and cross-references so technicians can quickly find instructions for their task and equipment configuration.
Structure procedures and metadata for reuse across manuals and connected maintenance systems, including links among steps, parts, tools, and references.
Help migrate manuals from MadCap Flare into Markdown/MDX in GitHub, preserving approved content, applicability, safety information, and revision history while checking published output.
Improve templates, shared content, authoring guidance, and publishing workflows; partner with software and systems teams to address tooling issues that affect documentation quality.
Identify where photos, diagrams, or illustrations would clarify a procedure, and work with engineers and illustrators to keep visuals accurate.