Technical Writer - Web Management

We’re looking for problem solvers, innovators, and dreamers who are searching for anything but business as usual. Like us, you’re a high performer who’s an expert at your craft, constantly challenging the status quo. You value inclusivity and want to join a culture that empowers you to show up as your authentic self. You know that success hinges on commitment, that our differences make us stronger, and that the finish line is always sweeter when the whole team crosses together.

The Global Content team publishes help documentation for all our products at Alteryx Help Documentation and affiliated sites. Our website is the official technical documentation site for Alteryx. It is available in 8 languages, serves more than half a million visits per month, and hosts more than 20 GB of content. It is a static site built with Paligo CMS and hosted in AWS.

Our ideal candidate is a technical writer looking to advance their skills in web management, or a web professional looking to enter the tech writing field.

This teammate will become our specialist for all-things web. They will be responsible for optimizing technologies and processes to provide the best user experience. Their website manager contributions improve the user experience and site performance, as well as recommending improvements for SEO, site maps, robots.txt, redirects, etc. They will also collaborate with our IT and Information Security departments to ensure compliance and implement best practices.

On the technical writing side, we will adjust the projects and responsibilities to ensure the workload is balanced with the web manager activities. This teammate could own documentation for smaller product suites, products with sporadic releases, ad-hoc projects, or assist other tech writers with minor updates and release work. We expect the tech writing workload to fluctuate, especially when we get close to release time, have major features in progress, or custom documentation projects.

What you will own and improve

• Branding, Localization, and Accessibility— You are the only expert on the team on CSS, HTML, and JavaScript, and will use these skills to customize the look and feel of our site, as well as language and accessibility functionalities. The CMS provides an out-of-the-box template. You will use your skillset to adapt it to our needs. You produce ideas, implement them, and measure results. Your contributions improve the global user experience.

• Web performance and availability—You monitor our website and identify where actions are required. You identify areas of improvement, and you develop and deploy fixes. For items that require external assistance, you coordinate with IT and vendors. You identify risks, remove blockers, and manage stakeholder technical communications for items related to our web performance and security. A job well done means that the website operates without errors, sev-1 issues are resolved within 24 hours, and sev-2 issues within 48.

• AWS Well Architected Framework—The technical writing team owns the information architecture of the site. You own designing and implementing best practices from the AWS Well Architected Framework for the 20+ GB of content we store in S3.

• Ranking, Crawling, and Indexing—You implement best practices to sitemaps, robots, and any other files to ensure only relevant information is getting indexed and returned in search results.

• Google Analytics—You enjoy gathering and analyzing data from Google Analytics. This is a team initiative where the Tech Writing and Localization team provide inputs and ideas and collaborate on the design and implementation.

• Custom scripting—Our site relies on JavaScript to perform certain functions, as well as a custom script to provide search results to API queries from our flagship products. You will own and maintain custom scripts or collaborate with our vendor in the development and maintenance of existing scripts.

• Technical Documentation—Based on your level of tech writing experience, you will own product documentation suites, create ad-hoc documentation, or support the technical writers with updates to existing documentation. We will adapt your tech writing assignments as needed to ensure you can accommodate web management tasks without work overload. As website improvements are implemented and more bandwidth becomes available, we’ll assign additional tech writing projects or ownership of documentation for additional products.

What you already know

• You have a bachelor's degree (or equal experience) in a field relevant to this role.

• You have an innate curiosity and the ability to learn technical topics on your own.

• You are passionate about online technical communication. You either have 2 years of experience in technical writing for software products, or you are an experienced web manager looking to learn and develop skills in technical writing.

• You have at least intermediate knowledge in CSS, HTML5, and JavaScript, and a portfolio to showcase your level of expertise.

• You have one year of full-time experience as the web admin or developer for large websites hosted in AWS using S3, EC2, CloudFront, and Route53. Alternatively, you can meet this requirement with formal education in AWS or an associate-level AWS certification, and a portfolio of websites you have deployed in AWS (please include a link to your portfolio in your resume).

• You understand how websites are built and optimized for localization and accessibility.

• You are a team player and a team builder. You thrive in multicultural and diverse environments. You are an advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

What you will learn (if you don’t know already)

• Work at software development companies—Understanding of the Software Development Lifecycle, Agile/Scrum framework, and platforms like Jira (extra points for Git and JQL). You’ll understand traditional release cycles, as well as continuous delivery for cloud products.

• Accessibility, localization, and user experience—We aim to create user experiences that delight our customers around the world. You will be an advocate for constant improvement and a partner for implementation on our website.

• Content management systems—We create our documentation in Paligo, a structured content CCMS. Knowledge of structured content will ease the learning curve but it’s not required.

• Website Technologies—Google Analytics, Search Console, and other technologies that help improve user experience, gather data, and help us measure the impact of our work. You might also assist with implementation of third-party products such as feedback forms and search solutions on our site.

• Technical Writing—If you are a web manager starting in tech writing, we’ll support your journey in learning best practices such as gathering inputs from hands-on experience and interviewing SMEs, writing in plain language, writing for localization, participating in peer reviews, following styles and standards, etc.

The Team

We are part of the Product and Engineering organization. Our group reports to the senior director of UX. You will report to the manager of Global Content.

Global Content includes two teams: Tech Writing and Localization.

• Tech Writing has 9 technical content creators based in the USA, Czech Republic, and India. They are passionate about styles and standards, technology, data science, and the Oxford comma. They report to the manager of Global Content.

• The Localization team reports to the localization manager. It’s a multicultural team of seven localization specialists, based in the Czech Republic. They are fearless advocates for top-quality localization, and global user experience. Localization also has a close relationship with the internationalization and accessibility engineering teams, based in the USA and India.

• You will become our specialist for all-things web. You will be responsible for optimizing technologies and processes to provide the best user experience. Your website manager contributions improve the user experience and site performance, as well as recommending improvements for SEO, site maps, robots.txt, redirects, etc. You will also collaborate with our IT and Information Security departments to ensure compliance and implement best practices. 

We are an all-remote team and work flexible schedules. Most work is asynchronous via Slack, Teams, Confluence, or email. Our weekly team calls are on Mondays and Tuesdays at 8 pm Bangalore’s time. We’ll set a block of office hours two times per week between 8 and 10 pm to simplify ad-hoc meeting scheduling, but you might need to occasionally attend early morning or evening calls to accommodate other teams. This position might require attendance twice per week to the office in Bangalore, but we can accommodate exceptions upon request.

Find yourself checking a lot of these boxes but doubting whether you should apply? At Alteryx, we support a growth mindset for our associates through all stages of their careers. If you meet some of the requirements and you share our values, we encourage you to apply. As part of our ongoing commitment to a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace, we’re invested in building teams with a wide variety of backgrounds, identities, and experiences.