Senior Technical Writer

Sierra Ventures; San Jose (CA); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 156,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Job summary

Spectro Cloud in San Jose, CA, is seeking a Senior Technical Writer to join our Documentation & Education team. You will create user-friendly reference materials, diagrams, and how-tos for Palette, our Kubernetes management platform, working with developers and engineers to document complex features.

We value hands-on testing, Docs-as-Code, and collaboration across product, engineering, support. This role offers hybrid work in San Jose three days a week with optional home days, and potential

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience as a technical writer.
• Experience with Docs-as-Code processes.
• Proficient writing in Markdown.
• Proficient with git, CLIs, Docker, and GitHub.
• Familiar with containers and Kubernetes.
• Experience with AWS, Azure, GCP, or VMware.
• Ability to coach other writers.
• Excellent communication skills.
• Able to create diagrams and visual resources.

Responsibilities

• Create clear, in-depth how-to guides and feature documentation that help users understand and use product features.
• Conduct hands-on testing, experimentation, and independent research to gain deep, first-hand product knowledge.
• Collaborate closely with product managers, developers, engineers, QA, and UX to gather and validate technical information, clarify complex functionality, and stay aligned with evolving product roadmaps.
• Author technical blogs, release notes, and long-form content that explain product innovations and industry trends.
• Champion user-first documentation practices by advocating for accessible, inclusive, and task-oriented content
• Define and maintain content standards, templates, and voice/tone guidelines to ensure consistency across documentation.
• Mentor and support junior or mid-level technical writers, providing feedback on their work, sharing best practices, and helping them develop their technical and editorial skills, fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous learning.
• Refactor and enhance documentation information architecture to improve content organization, navigation, and discoverability across the Docs site.
• Take ownership of high-impact documentation projects end-to-end, including planning, coordination, writing, and review.

Skills

Technical writing

Markdown

Docs-as-Code

Git

Kubernetes

Docker

Cloud platforms

Mentoring

Communication

Tools

Git

CLI tools

Terraform

GitHub

Job description

Who We Are

We are Spectro Cloud. We're on a mission to deliver a Kubernetes-centric platform that allows developers and their IT & Platform friends to work together making software easier, safer and more fun to deliver and manage. We help people use and run Kubernetes their way, anywhere. Led by a team that has built products and companies successfully before and is doing it again; together with talented team members and industry-leading investors backing us up, we're taking K8s everywhere you can imagine.

About The Job

The Spectro Cloud Documentation & Education team is looking for a Senior Technical Writer to join our experienced team of technical writers and education engineers. We are looking for someone with a strong technical background to contribute to our documentation and provide the best user experience with Palette, our Kubernetes management platform.

As a Technical Writer, you will focus on creating user-friendly content that meets our customers’ needs and concerns. In your day-to-day, you will work closely with developers, engineers, and other technical staff to understand and document the technology and software that we build at Spectro Cloud. You will create reference materials, diagrams, and how-tos to help our practitioners gain a deeper understanding of the product. We believe in team and individual ownership, so you will work alongside other team members to build expertise in a product area.

We are a technical product, so we are looking for individuals who are comfortable with developer workflows and using the same tools as developers: git, Kubernetes, command-line interfaces, GitHub, containers, Docker, cloud providers, and Terraform.

The Team

The Documentation & Education team works closely with the Product, Engineering, and Support teams to ensure we provide accurate, complete feature documentation that meets our customers\' real needs. Senior Technical Writers leverage their extensive technical and writing skills to educate prospective customers by creating clear, concise documentation representative of their workflows and concerns.

Job Responsibilities

• Create clear, in-depth how-to guides and feature documentation that help users understand and use product features, leveraging real-world scenarios, customer use cases, and product workflows.
• Conduct hands-on testing, experimentation, and independent research to gain deep, first-hand product knowledge. Identify and document edge cases, limitations, and feature updates to ensure technical accuracy and completeness.
• Collaborate closely with product managers, developers, engineers, QA, and UX to gather and validate technical information, clarify complex functionality, and stay aligned with evolving product roadmaps.
• Author technical blogs, release notes, and long-form content that explain product innovations and industry trends, supporting Spectro Cloud’s developer engagement.
• Champion user-first documentation practices by advocating for accessible, inclusive, and task-oriented content
• Define and maintain content standards, templates, and voice/tone guidelines to ensure consistency across documentation.
• Mentor and support junior or mid-level technical writers, providing feedback on their work, sharing best practices, and helping them develop their technical and editorial skills, fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous learning.
• Refactor and enhance documentation information architecture to improve content organization, navigation, and discoverability across the Docs site.
• Take ownership of high-impact documentation projects end-to-end, including planning, coordination, writing, and review.

Required Qualifications

We don’t expect the ideal candidate to check every box, but the items below are things we look for when reviewing candidates. Do not let this discourage you from applying.

• 4+ years of experience as a technical writer
• Experience in analyzing information architecture and restructuring content
• Experience with Docs-as-Code processes
• Able to coach and mentor other technical writers
• Comfortable writing in Markdown
• Comfortable using developer tools such as git, CLIs, Docker, and GitHub
• Familiar with containers and Kubernetes
• Experience with infrastructure providers (AWS, Azure, GCP, VMware)
• Comfortable creating diagrams and visual resources to help the learning process
• Displays a passion for learning and exploring new technologies
• Excellent communication skills
• Ability to dive into technical features by themselves and create documentation

Additional Preferred Qualifications

• Cloud certifications, such as the AWS cloud certifications
• Experience with AI tools and workflows

The On-Target Earnings for this role is $140,000-$156,000 + Equity

Location: San Jose, CA (Hybrid) We are in-office 3 times a week, with optional work from home the other 2 days.