Overview
npm is the world’s largest software repository, with over 500,000 software packages in our registry, downloaded over 10 billion times per month by our more than 8.3 million users.
Behind these big numbers is a real problem: npm’s user base doubles in size every 12 months. Another way to put that is: half of npm’s users have been using it for less than a year. On an average day 4,000 new people try npm for the first time. These new users are looking for advice and guidance. We have a full-time support team who answer tickets, and on top of that, every month 1.2 million people visit our documentation at docs.npmjs.com.
We care a lot about communication at npm, and about good writing in particular. Our founders have written about documentation driven development and how written proposals improve our software design process. We recognize the importance of writing and value it. You can tell because we hire for it; our team is suspiciously full of good writers.
That’s where you come in. We need a technical writer to update, expand, and improve our documentation everywhere it shows up. This includes in-depth API documentation, tutorials, instructional blog posts, scripts for technical videos, diagrams and illustrations, and usage examples. Your audience will range from brand-new npm users to professional software developers who have been using npm for years.
In addition to writing, you will participate in new projects as they unfold. You’ll provide the usability perspective that comes with the territory of being a skilled instructional writer to inform the shape of new features. You’ll also interact with and interview our community, to address new use-cases as they arise, and discover and amplify best practices.
npm is a startup, so you will have a lot of autonomy and your work will largely be self-directed. You will report directly to the CTO, and be responsible for getting your content out into the world by working with our engineering team to update our documentation sites and in-line documentation sources.
We are looking for a writer first and foremost, with at least a couple of technical writing jobs already under their belt. npm is a command-line tool used by JavaScript developers, so if you’ve already got some experience in Unix environments and with programming you will probably find that helpful, but it’s not essential.
We want to work with somebody who cares about the craft of writing and is able to see the big picture. You should be able to comprehensively cover edge cases when writing documentation, but also to judiciously simplify to create tutorials and instructions that are easy to follow. We are not looking for a marketing copy writer (right now), nor are we looking for an “engineer who can write” (we have a bunch of those!).
If you’d like to help 8 million people do their jobs better and faster, please apply. Include 2 or 3 examples of your technical writing; they do not need to be related to npm.
Want to work remotely?
We are accepting applicants for this position who wish to work remotely, as long as you are based in a time zone between UTC+1 (Western Europe) and UTC-8 (USA Pacific Coast) so that you have some overlap with your manager. If you apply to work remotely, please have some experience successfully working remotely in a previous position. Remote workers receive the same salary and benefits (or as close as is practical) as applicants based in the Bay Area.