Technical Writer
Location: New York, NY | Type: Contract | Setup: Hybrid | Experience: 5+ years | Pay: $60/hr
About the Role
We're hiring a Technical Writer to document a software platform while it's still being built, working elbow to elbow with the engineers writing it. You'll produce the technical design documents the team relies on now, and the support documentation the support organization will live in after the build team rolls off.
The client is a crafts-based digital product studio backed by a global strategy consulting parent, delivering production software to enterprise clients across financial services, energy, and other complex industries. This is roughly a four month engagement running into early 2027, hybrid out of their New York office, because the work depends on being in the room with developers rather than chasing them over Slack.
If you've ever inherited a system with no documentation and had to reverse engineer it from the code, you know exactly why this role exists.
What You'll Do
- Interview developers and architects to pull design decisions, data flows, and edge cases out of their heads and onto the page
- Write technical design documents that describe how the system actually works: architecture, integrations, dependencies, and the reasoning behind the choices
- Build the support documentation set the support team will use on day one, including runbooks, troubleshooting guides, escalation paths, and known issues
- Diagram systems and flows so a reader can orient in thirty seconds rather than three pages
- Sit in on stand-ups, design reviews, and demos so the docs keep pace with the build instead of trailing it
- Set the structure and standards for the doc set: templates, naming, versioning, where things live
- Partner with the support organization on a real handoff, testing the docs against their questions before the engagement ends
- Flag the gaps. If something can't be documented because nobody has decided it yet, say so early.
Qualifications
- 5+ years writing technical documentation for software products, ideally in a consulting, agency, or client services setting
- Experience producing both technical design docs for engineers and support documentation for non-engineering readers
- Comfortable reading code, API specs, and architecture diagrams well enough to ask a developer a sharp question
- A track record of running your own interviews with engineers, not waiting for a subject matter expert to hand you a draft
- Strong information architecture instincts. You know how to structure a doc set someone can navigate
- Fluent with documentation tooling and workflows: Confluence, Markdown, docs-as-code repos, diagramming tools
- Able to work hybrid in New York City
Nice to Have
- Experience documenting a system through a build-to-support transition
- API documentation and developer-facing reference material
- Already using AI tooling in your drafting and research workflow
Why Join Us
You'll be embedded with a team that treats software like a craft, where engineers and designers work side by side and the bar for what ships is high. Documentation here isn't an afterthought bolted on at the end. It's part of what the client is delivering, and it's owned by the person in this seat.
Four months, a defined scope, and a clear finish line: leave behind a support team that can run a system they didn't build.
