Technical Writer, Defense Hardware & Systems

Anduril Industries, Inc.; Costa Mesa (CA); On-site; USD 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A defense technology company in Costa Mesa is looking for a Technical Writer to create and maintain user documentation for military products. The successful candidate will collaborate with engineering and operations teams, ensuring that technical manuals and guides are user-friendly and meet customer needs. With a focus on supporting defense capabilities, candidates must have a proven track record in technical documentation and the ability to obtain a Top Secret security clearance. This role is critical for enhancing user understanding of sophisticated defense tools.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of demonstrated excellence generating technical documentation.
• Experience writing technical user-facing documentation.
• Eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Top Secret security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Generate, review, and edit user-focused documentation.
• Evaluate and prioritize tasks to support documentation efforts.
• Help build a culture of technical documentation within the team.

Skills

Technical documentation generation

Reading engineering documentation

Interpersonal communication

Content creation in various formats

Job description

Technical Writer, Defense Hardware & Systems

Anduril Industries is a defense technology company with a mission to transform U.S. and allied military capabilities with advanced technology. By bringing the expertise, technology, and business model of the 21st century’s most innovative companies to the defense industry, Anduril is changing how military systems are designed, built and sold. Anduril’s family of systems is powered by Lattice OS, an AI-powered operating system that turns thousands of data streams into a realtime, 3D command and control center. As the world enters an era of strategic competition, Anduril is committed to bringing cutting-edge autonomy, AI, computer vision, sensor fusion, and networking technology to the military in months, not years.

ABOUT THE TEAM

Anduril’s Mission Success team is a cross-functional group that partners with every business line and supports all products that Anduril builds. Our responsibilities include product operations, training and adoption, and user documentation. We are seeking an experienced Technical Writer to create and maintain user documentation across our diverse business lines. We believe that the quality of our documentation should reflect the quality of products, which are world-class.

ABOUT THE JOB

As a Technical Writer, your mission is to partner with our numerous product and operations teams to deliver accurate, updated, and easy-to-understand documentation on how to use Anduril products. You will do whatever it takes to organize our engineering and program delivery functions in this mission. In this role, you will work closely with engineers, operations, and various subject matter experts to understand our products, identify user workflows, and use documentation to close the gap. As such, the technical Writer will play a foundational role in setting the bar for tone, voice, and quality across our written artifacts. With Anduril’s focus on defense and national security, user documentation plays a critical role in ensuring front-line operators know how to leverage the “arsenal of democracy.” Your mission is to make the process of learning how to operate systems as easy and seamless as possible, with exceptionally well written and presented artifacts. You will identify relevant stakeholders and lead them through a documentation roadmap with established key milestones and targets. You will engage subject matter experts at the right time, and you will guide them towards a finished user-facing document that plainly meets customer needs. Finally, you will work with our account teams to ensure that contract deliverables are accurate, on-time, and in the right format. Written content artifacts under this charter may include things like: technical manuals, operational manuals, maintenance manuals, procedures, checklists, templates, user guides, troubleshooting guides, and release notes. You will partner with account, product, and engineering teams across all phases of product development to ensure users have the right documentation available.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Generate, review, and edit documentation that is user-focused. Work with engineering and operations to deliver task, conditions, standard-centric documentation
• Evaluate and prioritize tasks required to successfully support product documentation efforts and keep them on track. Help drive the best decision for the company by using a data-driven approach and consider input from stakeholders to ensure well-informed decisions.
• Communicate and help manage expectations. Ensure risks are noted with adequate time, and shared with leadership.
• Help build a culture of technical documentation by contributing to the living documentation process, ensuring that those that come after you learn from your acquired Anduril experience.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 5+ years of demonstrated excellence generating technical documentation
• Experience writing technical user-facing documentation
• Experience reading and interpreting engineering documentation
• Experience building content in a variety of formats (Word, XML, etc)
• Eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Top Secret security clearance

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Military exposure and experience, particularly with military technical documentation writing and formatting standards, guidelines, and verbiage (MIL-STD-40051, S1000D, etc)
• Strong communication (written and verbal) and interpersonal skills, with emphasis on technical subjects
• Passion for excellent documentation and user experience
• Previous experience creating technical documentation in Aerospace and Defense (for DoD)
• Experience delivering content on fast-paced, complex projects with multiple stakeholders

Anduril is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, or disability.