Technical Writer at Zipline in San Francisco, CA

Job description

About Zipline Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service. We are on a mission to serve all humans equally by ensuring access to food, medicine and essential goods anytime, anywhere. We design, build, and operate the world’s largest autonomous logistics system, delivering critical supplies quickly and reliably. Today, Zipline operates on four continents, makes a delivery somewhere in the world every 30 seconds, and has completed millions of deliveries to date, including blood, vaccines, medical supplies, food, and retail products. Our customers include the world’s largest and most prominent healthcare systems, governments, retailers, restaurants and global businesses who rely on us to save lives, reduce emissions, increase economic opportunity, and provide delivery from point A to point B as fast as possible. The drone is only 15% of what we’ve built to enable seamless, reliable, global operations. Our system strengthens supply chains, reduces congestion, and gives people time back. With more than 140 million commercial autonomous miles safely flown, Zipline is redefining access to healthcare, consumer products, and food across the globe. We operate at a global scale and are looking for practical problem solvers who thrive on real-world challenges and rapid growth. Our team is motivated by building systems that have a direct, meaningful impact on people’s lives and by scaling the future of logistics. We are seeking people who sculpt from first principles, enjoy facing adversity, and can do the impossible at record breaking speeds. About You and The Role Clear, accurate service documentation helps technicians maintain Zipline’s aircraft and equipment safely and consistently. We’re looking for a Technical Writer to own manuals and procedures that make complex systems understandable and give field teams the information they need at the point of work. Your first projects will focus on maintenance documentation for the Droid, Dock, and related site equipment. As priorities shift, you may also develop troubleshooting guides, service bulletins, and temporary revisions for other systems. You’ll work with engineering, maintenance, operations, and other technical writers to research, validate, review, and publish content. You’ll also help the team move from MadCap Flare to a GitHub-based workflow, with content that can be maintained and reused as Zipline grows. To do this well, you’ll need to get close to the hardware and the people who service it. You’ll ask precise questions, resolve gaps in source material, and stay hands-on through publication. What You'll Do Own assigned manuals and procedures from initial research through release and ongoing maintenance. Keep them accurate as hardware, software, and service processes change. Write maintenance procedures, inspections, troubleshooting guidance, and system descriptions. Make safety information, applicability, tools, parts, and prerequisites easy to find. Research engineering source material, observe maintenance work, and interview subject matter experts. Resolve conflicting information and confirm technical accuracy before publication. Coordinate reviews, approvals, and release dependencies. Track decisions and revisions, communicate blockers, and follow each change through to publication. Use field feedback and change requests to improve documentation. Work with partners to prioritize updates by safety, operational impact, and release timing. Organize content, terminology, navigation, and cross-references so technicians can quickly find the right instructions for their task and equipment configuration. Structure procedures and metadata for reuse across manuals and connected maintenance systems, including links among steps, parts, tools, and references. Help migrate manuals from MadCap Flare into Markdown/MDX in GitHub. Preserve approved content, applicability, safety information, and revision history while checking the published output. Improve templat