Senior Technical Writer

About The Role:

At Atomic Machines, we’re completely rethinking how things are built—and we need a Senior Technical Writer with a strong engineering background who can make our revolutionary technology easy to understand. In this role, you’ll use your technical expertise to transform detailed engineering concepts, cutting-edge manufacturing processes, and innovative product specs into clear, concise documentation. Your audience will include everyone from fellow engineers to new hires and future customers. You’ll be part of a small, passionate team shaping the company’s vision and products, and your work will be key in bringing a whole new category of devices to life. If you love the challenge of diving deep into technical details and explaining them in a way that sparks curiosity, we’d love to hear from you!

What You’ll Do: 

• Write clear, concise “Theory of Operations” documents that break down system functionality and design choices.
• Create Work Instructions and SOPs so people can easily follow step-by-step processes.
• Document device operations and characteristics, highlighting performance metrics and technical specs.
• Work with engineers to capture how devices operate under different conditions.
• Work with engineering teams to document SOPs for assembling nodes.
• Work with manufacturing to develop Work Instructions for production use.
• Translate complex engineering data into easy-to-understand explanations and visuals.
• Create guides, schedules, and templates for new hires so they can hit the ground running.
• Keep an organized knowledge base of best practices, FAQs, and lessons learned.
• Partner with engineers, product managers, and designers to gather details and confirm accuracy.
• Serve as a go-to person for questions about documentation needs.
• Establish style guides and templates to keep content consistent and user-friendly.
• Continuously refine our approaches to ensure the highest quality documentation.
• Learn new tools and trends that can improve our docs and processes.
• Keep an eye on user feedback and champion documentation improvements whenever needed.
• The majority of work will be out of our Emeryville office with occasional support in our Santa Clara office.

What You’ll Need: 

• A first-principles mindset — you question assumptions, break problems down to fundamentals, and prefer root-cause solutions over pattern-matching.
• Engineering background (BS, MS, or PhD in engineering, or BA with equivalent work experience).
• 10+ years of experience in a technical writer, product manager, engineering, or field/support engineering background.
• Strong understanding of Technical Writing principles that you can demonstrate through past writing samples.
• Able to break down technical concepts so anyone can grasp them.
• You know how to talk to engineers, product managers, and designers to get the info you need and translate into clear concise documents.
• Comfortable with shifting priorities, quick changes, and a startup’s ever-evolving needs.
• You bring a “startup mentality” to the table, proactively tackling challenges and seeking innovative solutions.
• Strong knowledge of content development cycles, and documentation best practices.
• Ability to manage competing priorities and convey changes in priorities and expected delivery schedule to partner teams.
• Grant proposal writing experience (winning proposals, and executing) preferred.