UX Writer

Nominal•Los Angeles, CA

18h•Onsite

About The Position

Nominal is building the connected test and operations platform powering the world's most advanced hardware systems, from spacecraft and autonomous vehicles to next-generation defense programs. Our platform gives hardware engineering teams a single place to ingest data, analyze performance, automate test execution, and collaborate across every phase of development, so they can move faster without sacrificing safety or precision. We're a fast-moving team that owns problems end-to-end, works across disciplines, and thrives at the intersection of hardware and software. We serve top-tier commercial and defense customers, from autonomy leaders like Anduril and Shield AI to next-generation aerospace teams like Hermeus and REGENT, and performance engineering teams like Pratt Miller Motorsports, alongside mission partners within the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force on programs where failure isn’t an option. We’re backed by Sequoia, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, Lux Capital, and Lightspeed. Our team draws from SpaceX, Palantir, Anduril, Applied Intuition, and other leading companies, united by a common mission: giving hardware engineers the tools to build the future with speed, safety, and confidence. We are hiring a UX Writer to write and ship excellent product documentation, including walkthrough guides, how-to articles, and in-app user guidance. The writer will work with product, design, engineering, mission operations, and success teams to raise our quality bar while staying up-to-date with a changing product. Nominal’s users read the manual. They are experts and operators in deep hardware domains. They decide whether a vehicle flies, whether a campaign clears the next milestone, whether a mission-critical system is ready for mass production. They need to verify their numbers are correct. Great writing answers these questions quickly, while compounding the reader’s intuition for how to use Nominal. The UX writer is a learner, not a knower. They do not need an expertise in nuclear engineering or wind tunnel testing, but they can ask questions and learn enough about a new domain to help an engineering team get their work done. With time, they become a master of the platform: they learn how to accomplish every major workflow and how to use every notable feature, and keep track of everything new that’s shipping. Most importantly, the UX writer explains things very well. They write copy that is precise, concise, and confident. They put the right words in the right places. They sense how the quality of an explanation can accelerate the reader or slow them down. The UX writer holds a demanding editorial bar. They use AI to lift the bar, not to skip thinking. The writer is not expected to document every feature or workflow, but to focus on the highest-impact copy at all times.

Requirements

Truth-seeking: You keep asking but what does that actually mean until the answer is true. You can tell the difference between a sentence that sounds right and a sentence that is right.
Tenacity: You judge docs by how effectively they accelerate test. You draft and redraft, and make each pass better than the last. Your attention to an article is proportional to its impact.
Editorial judgment: You find the framing that answers the reader's question and compounds their understanding for the next question. You recognize when a draft has the right information but the wrong shape.
Domain hunger: You enjoy learning what a flight envelope defines, how a test campaign is organized, how statistical reasoning applies to manufacturing defects, and where the state of the art sits in validating autonomous systems. You learn enough intuition to identify the most representative use cases for Nominal. You have endless questions.
Leadership without authority: Nominal documentation takes positions. Readers come for guidance, and you help the company articulate best practices with clarity and conviction. You bring the strongest argument you have and are willing to lose it.
Consistency: High-quality writing needs to ship at high velocity, against deadlines, against AI drafts that look right and say nothing, against the temptation to cover every feature. You recognize each pressure when it appears, hold your standard, and prioritize your attention.

Responsibilities

Write and edit documentation so each artifact answers the reader's question and compounds their intuition for using the platform.
Write the in-product copy that catches engineers between actions: tooltips that explain why, empty states that point at what to do, error messages that name the cause and the fix, walkthroughs that trust the reader.
Read the UX docs that engineers ship, and edit engineers' drafts so the writing serves both the reader's domain and the author's intent.
Sit in feature reviews. Catch copy issues before they ship in code, and the workflow problems before they ship in docs.
Capture media (screenshots, gifs) of using Nominal that show representative use cases.
Research how engineers use Nominal: in calls, in support threads, and on-site while they work. Continuously improve the writing to better serve the reader.
Publish major releases in product update articles. Partner with engineers to write what shipped, why it shipped, and what it means for the engineer using it.