: What is a more techy Technical Writer job title that isn't cutesy or confusing? I have been hired as a Technical Writer at a firm who needed multiple types of writers: A few people were

Vote Up Vote Down

Technical writing is about relating new information in the area you are writing about to the existing knowledge of your audience. In order to do that you need to have some degree of that existing specialist knowledge yourself.

In this case, it sounds like the thing you would like to highlight, is the specialist knowledge that you possess that enables you to write for an audience of software developers.

To that end, I suggest something like:

"Writer, specializing in technical documentation for software developers"

It might seem a little wordy, but it's crystal clear what you mean at first reading. Anything shorter may confuse the reader, and let's face it, that would be the antithesis of what a good technical writer should do.

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

I really like the title "Developer Evangelist" or "Developer Advocate". The former implies that you're spreading knowledge about the company's software/SDK, but that you're also a Developer. The latter implies that you're helping developers interface with your company. I think the former title might be more suited to your preferences. This title is in common usage; e.g. Microsoft uses it: careers.microsoft.com/professionals/us/en/c-evangelism

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

This is a challenging specialization to capture in a job title, which is why my LinkedIn tagline says "speaker to programmers". But that doesn't work as a job title at any but the edgiest startups.

As suggested in this answer, some use Programming Writer. At a previous company I was documenting but also improving (and writing examples against) our SDK, and where we wanted to make it more clear to upper management and our new corporate overloads that I'm an engineering-grade technical writer, they gave me the title (Senior) SDK Developer. Depending on how involved you are in defining your SDK, that could work for you too.

At my current company I'm an Information Developer because that's the title they use; internally people know that I have programming cred, and if I need to communicate it externally, I'll probably have more than a title available to do it with. On a resume, for example, there are a couple ways to convey important information not covered in a job title. On LinkedIn (and in a cover letter) you can write a summary that people will see before they get to the job history. If I'm handing somebody a business card (I guess that could happen), we'll have the context of whatever conversation led to me doing so.

In my career I've found that the adjective (senior, principal, lead...) carries more weight than the specific tech-writer-ish title. If you get to principal/lead level, people who know anything at all about the field are going to expect you to have some real technical depth.

(0)