Senior Technical Writer

Job Description

Astronomer is the commercial developer of Apache Airflow, a community-driven open-source tool that’s leading the market in data orchestration. We’re a globally-distributed and rapidly growing venture-backed team of learners, innovators and collaborators. Our mission is to build an Enterprise-grade product that makes it easy for data teams at Fortune 500’s and startups alike to adopt Apache Airflow. As a member of our team, you will be at the forefront of the industry as we strive to make Apache Airflow the de-facto standard in data orchestration.

Your background may be unconventional; as long as you have the essential qualifications, we encourage you to apply. While having “bonus” qualifications makes for a strong candidate, Astronomer values diverse experiences. Many of us at Astronomer haven’t followed traditional career paths, and we welcome it if yours hasn’t either.

About this role

Astronomer is looking for a Senior Technical Writer to join our documentation team and contribute to the world’s biggest open source data project: Apache Airflow.

Over the past 2 years, the documentation team at Astronomer has grown and produced everything you see on Astronomer Docs. We’re really proud of what we’ve built. But despite being the commercial leaders of Apache Airflow and building products for data orchestration, a gap remains: official Airflow docs. And to educate the world about the power of Airflow, we have to get better at writing about how it works and what data teams can do with it.

 We’re excited to hire someone to take on this charter full time. For us, that means –  How might we modernize the way people learn Airflow? How do we weave in the best practices we’ve learned from our customers? How do we keep up with new Airflow features as the pace of releases continues to increase? How do we update the navigation in Airflow docs to be more intuitive, and highlight content that’s relevant for the most people?

If you’re a product-minded technical writer excited about open source communities, a documentation leader eager to make an impact at a high-growth company, or a data practitioner passionate about writing, this job is for you. Bonus: We expect you to work towards being an Apache Airflow committer and PMC.

What you get to do:

• Be the #1 contributor to Airflow documentation, working closely with internal engineering and release teams at Astronomer as well as dozens of OSS contributors.
• Identify common pitfalls in Airflow in partnership with community and support teams, and translate those to documentation opportunities.
• Create processes for updating Airflow docs, reviewing contributions, and making sure we keep up with new releases as the codebase expands.
• Lead efforts that encourage the community to contribute to Airflow docs, including advocating for tooling that makes the process easier and creating a guiding style guide.
• Work with Product and Design to re-design the Airflow documentation landing page and information architecture to create a more cohesive and accessible learning experience.
•  Provide feedback for all written content in Apache Airflow, including error messages and text that users see in the Airflow UI.
• Take a leadership role in designing the future of Astronomer’s documentation function.

What you bring to the role:

• You’re familiar with GitHub, git, and version control best practices.
• You love to write and have a knack for breaking down complex technical concepts into engaging and digestible content.
• You’re an exceptionally strong communicator and thoughtful leader. You’re a natural at forging relationships with all corners of the company.
• You care about quality, technical accuracy, and are a hands-on learner who wants to make sure you’ve tested something before you write about it.
• You’re comfortable in ambiguity and are strong at managing both time and competing priorities. You can build your own roadmap.
• You’re excited about Astronomer and want to join us on the journey to revolutionizing data orchestration.

Bonus points if you have:

• 3+ years of experience writing technical documentation or 3+ years of experience as a data practitioner.
• Proficiency in Python or SQL.
• Experience with Apache Airflow, dbt, Databricks,  or Snowflake.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, and cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure)

The estimated salary for this role ranges from $125,000 – $165,000, along with an equity component. This range is merely an estimate, and actual compensation may deviate from this range based on skills, experience, and qualifications

At Astronomer, we value diversity. We are an equal opportunity employer: we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.  Astronomer is a remote-first company.