[Hiring] Principal Technical Writer @Elastic

Role Description

We are looking for a Principal Technical Writer to lead the strategy and execution of our customer onboarding and 'Getting Started' content. Your mission is to transform our onboarding materials into a cohesive, narrative-driven experience that guides users to their first 'aha!' moment. You will partner closely with the Self-Service (SSC) team, acting as a bridge between the field, product, and documentation to ensure our content is not just accurate, but effective at guiding trial-to-paid conversion. In this role, you will define the narrative architecture of our user journey, ensuring that every touchpoint, from first-time setup to advanced feature adoption, feels like a seamless, intentional story. You'll be the champion of the new-user experience, working in lockstep with others to turn technical capability into user success.

What You Will Be Doing

• Drive the onboarding content strategy.
• Define and execute a cohesive narrative for how users learn to use our products, ensuring a seamless story from the first visit to successful deployment.
• Align Field, Product, and Docs.
• Act as a central point of contact for stakeholders.
• Work with Product teams to understand roadmap changes.
• Collaborate with Field teams to identify friction points in real-world deployments.
• Ensure high-quality content output with Documentation teams.
• Design user-focused flows.
• Create organized onboarding experiences that highlight best practices, troubleshooting, and clear next steps.
• Avoid confusing 'choose-your-own-adventure' methods.
• Measure and Iterate.
• Use user research, support feedback, and telemetry to identify where users stall.
• Iterate on content to reduce churn and improve time-to-first-value.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of relevant experience.
• Experience in technical writing or developer-focused roles, with a proven track record in onboarding or user journey design.
• Cross-functional leadership.
• Proven ability to lead initiatives and influence stakeholders across product, engineering, and sales/field organizations.
• Deep narrative skills.
• Experience in creating compelling, cohesive stories for complex technical products.
• Data-driven mindset.
• Comfortable using analytics, UXR, and support data to inform documentation decisions and prioritize work.
• Collaborative spirit.
• Experience working in large, distributed organizations where alignment across multiple teams is critical to success.
• Customer knowledge.
• Experience with self-service cloud products as a user or practitioner, with an understanding of how customers onboard, evaluate, and adopt technical tools.

Benefits

• Competitive pay based on the work you do here and not your previous salary.
• Health coverage for you and your family in many locations.
• Ability to craft your calendar with flexible locations and schedules for many roles.
• Generous number of vacation days each year.
• Increase your impact - We match up to $2000 (or local currency equivalent) for financial donations and service.
• Up to 40 hours each year to use toward volunteer projects you love.
• Embracing parenthood with a minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave.