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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Information Developer

💰 $ - $

EngineeringDocumentationTechnical WritingProduct

🎯 Role Definition

An Information Developer (also known as a Documentation Engineer or Technical Writer) is responsible for designing, creating, and maintaining accurate, clear, and searchable technical content that enables customers, developers, and internal stakeholders to understand and successfully use products and APIs. The role requires structured authoring, content strategy, tooling expertise (DITA, Markdown, XML, Sphinx), experience with developer platforms and APIs (OpenAPI/Swagger), localization, and strong cross-functional collaboration with engineering, product management, QA, and support teams.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Junior Technical Writer or Documentation Specialist
  • Software Engineer or QA Engineer transitioning to developer-facing documentation
  • Content Designer / UX Writer

Advancement To:

  • Senior Information Developer / Senior Technical Writer
  • Documentation Engineering Lead or Documentation Manager
  • Developer Experience (DevEx) Lead or Developer Relations Manager
  • Product Manager or Content Strategy Lead

Lateral Moves:

  • UX Writer / Content Designer
  • Knowledge Base Manager or Help Center Manager
  • Localization Program Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Produce clear, accurate, and user-focused technical documentation including API reference, SDK usage guides, architecture overviews, developer tutorials, integration guides, SDK examples, and troubleshooting articles to support both internal teams and external users.
  • Create and maintain API documentation from OpenAPI/Swagger specifications, ensuring endpoints, parameters, request/response samples, error codes, and authentication workflows are correct and up to date.
  • Author and maintain structured content using DITA, XML, AsciiDoc, or Markdown to enable single-sourcing, conditional publishing, reuse, and multi-channel output (web help, PDF, in-app).
  • Build, maintain, and publish developer documentation sites using static site generators and documentation frameworks such as Sphinx, Read the Docs, Docusaurus, Hugo, Jekyll or MkDocs to ensure docs are indexed, performant, and mobile-friendly.
  • Integrate documentation into CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI) to automate documentation builds, previews, link checking, and deployment as part of the release workflow.
  • Collaborate continuously with software engineers, product managers, API designers, and QA to create and validate content aligned with product releases, feature updates, and roadmap priorities.
  • Create and maintain code samples, SDK snippets, and quickstart projects in multiple programming languages (for example Python, Java, JavaScript/Node.js, Go, C#) that are runnable, tested, and published in code repositories.
  • Maintain a comprehensive set of release notes, upgrade guides, deprecation notices, and migration instructions to guide users through product lifecycle changes and minimize support load.
  • Establish and enforce documentation style guides, templates, and contributor workflows to maintain consistent voice, tone, structure, and accessibility across all technical content.
  • Perform technical editing and peer reviews of contributions from engineers and subject-matter experts to ensure clarity, accuracy, and adherence to documentation standards.
  • Implement and manage localization workflows and translation memory tools (e.g., Crowdin, Transifex, Phrase) to coordinate translation of content for global audiences and maintain source-of-truth content.
  • Use content analytics, search metrics, and feedback (Help Center metrics, search queries, support tickets) to identify documentation gaps, prioritize updates, and measure documentation impact on product adoption and support metrics.
  • Design and run developer onboarding flows and in-product contextual help to improve the first-time user experience and increase time-to-first-success for integrators and developers.
  • Capture and document troubleshooting scenarios, FAQs, and common support cases by analyzing customer support tickets, error telemetry, and logs to reduce mean time to resolution.
  • Produce diagrams, flowcharts, and architecture visuals (using tools like Visio, Lucidchart, Draw.io) to illustrate system architecture, data flows, and integration patterns for technical audiences.
  • Manage documentation versioning, branching, and archival strategies to ensure accurate historic documentation for legacy product versions and compliance requirements.
  • Drive initiatives to modernize documentation ecosystems, migrating legacy documentation (Word, PDF) to centralized, searchable, and maintainable web-based doc platforms.
  • Train and mentor engineers and product team contributors on documentation best practices, structured authoring, and repository workflows to increase documentation velocity and quality.
  • Coordinate cross-functional documentation reviews and sign-offs for regulatory, legal, and security-related documentation to ensure compliance with organizational and industry standards.
  • Conduct usability testing, content audits, and information architecture reviews to improve navigation, findability, and consumption of documentation by diverse audiences.
  • Maintain and curate a public knowledge base and developer portal that showcases code samples, SDKs, tutorials, blog posts, and integration examples to drive developer engagement and adoption.
  • Monitor and triage documentation-related issues from issue trackers, GitHub/GitLab repos, and community forums; create backlog items and work with teams to resolve documentation defects and inaccuracies.
  • Implement accessibility best practices in documentation (WCAG guidelines) to ensure content is usable by people with disabilities, including alt text, semantic HTML, and keyboard navigation.
  • Support developer community engagement by preparing documentation for developer events, hackathons, webinars, and sample projects to increase developer self-sufficiency.
  • Maintain secure handling of sensitive documentation content and follow company policies for redaction, export control, and confidentiality when authoring or publishing docs.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Provide documentation support for internal tools, data pipelines, and analytics dashboards to democratize data usage across the organization.
  • Assist support and product teams by producing internal runbooks and onboarding materials that reduce onboarding time for new engineers.
  • Advocate for documentation-driven development and embed documentation tasks into the engineering workflow so documentation is delivered alongside code.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Expert authoring with structured content frameworks: DITA XML, AsciiDoc, Markdown, or other structured authoring systems to support single-sourcing and conditional publishing.
  • API documentation and developer portal experience working with RESTful APIs, OpenAPI/Swagger, gRPC, GraphQL, and tooling to generate reference docs.
  • Proficiency with documentation frameworks and static site tools: Sphinx, Docusaurus, MkDocs, Read the Docs, Jekyll, Hugo, or equivalent.
  • Version control and collaboration workflows using Git, GitHub/GitLab, branching strategies, pull requests, and documentation CI/CD automation.
  • Familiarity with code sample creation and testing across languages (Python, Java, JavaScript/Node.js, Go, C#) and packaging SDKs for release.
  • Experience with content management and translation/localization platforms such as Crowdin, Transifex, Phrase, Smartling, or similar.
  • Knowledge of documentation testing and validation tools: spellcheckers, linkcheckers, schema validators, and automated sample build/run testing.
  • Experience integrating documentation into product release processes and managing docs for multiple product versions and channels.
  • Skilled with diagramming and visual communication tools: Lucidchart, Draw.io, Gliffy, Visio, or Figma for technical diagrams.
  • Understanding of web technologies (HTML, CSS, basic JavaScript) and accessibility standards (WCAG) for authoring and publishing web-based docs.
  • Familiarity with analytics and search tools (Google Analytics, Elasticsearch, Algolia DocSearch) to evaluate content usage and search performance.
  • Experience with content modeling, information architecture, and taxonomy development to improve findability and SEO for documentation.

Soft Skills

  • Strong collaborator: ability to work cross-functionally with engineers, product managers, QA, and support to gather technical information and drive documentation deliverables.
  • Excellent communicator with the ability to translate complex technical concepts into concise, usable content for diverse audiences including developers, admins, and end users.
  • Detail-oriented with a strong commitment to accuracy, consistency, and quality control in technical content.
  • Proactive problem solver who can identify documentation gaps, propose solutions, and prioritize work based on customer impact and product roadmap.
  • Empathetic writer: focuses on user-centric documentation design, empathy for novice users, and building clear onboarding flows.
  • Time management and project organization skills to manage multiple documentation projects, deadlines, and release cycles.
  • Mentorship and training aptitude to upskill engineers and contributors on documentation best practices and authoring workflows.
  • Adaptable and curious, able to learn new technologies and domain-specific concepts quickly to produce accurate documentation.
  • Analytical mindset with the ability to interpret metrics and feedback to continuously improve documentation effectiveness.
  • Conflict resolution and negotiation skills to balance competing priorities between product feature schedules and documentation timelines.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Technical Communication, English, Computer Science, Information Science, Engineering, or related field.

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree or specialized certification in Technical Communication, UX Writing, Information Design, or an adjacent discipline.
  • Certifications or coursework in DITA/XML, API design, or developer experience are a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Technical Communication
  • Computer Science or Software Engineering
  • Information Science / Library Science
  • English / Professional Writing
  • Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) / UX Design

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 3–7 years of professional experience in technical writing, information development, or documentation engineering; experience may vary by seniority level.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years of hands-on experience producing developer documentation and API references, maintaining documentation sites, and owning documentation processes for a SaaS, platform, or developer product.
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