Skills and expertise needed:
Software Engineering Foundation:
- A deep understanding of software development and engineering principles is a primary requirement.
- Cloud & DevOps Literacy: The writer must be comfortable documenting highly technical, internal-facing systems.
- Cloud Infrastructure: Azure (specifically GovCloud/IL4), cloud architecture, Infrastructure as a Service, terraform, and provisioning.
- CI/CD: Complex continuous integration and deployment pipelines.
- Databases: PostgreSQL provisioning, operations, and disaster recovery (DR).
Configuration Management:
- Documenting unified configuration systems and migration from legacy tools.
- Observability: Writing best practices for monitoring and alerting.
Core Documentation & Writing Skills:
- Clarity and Conciseness: The ability to create clear, concise, and user-friendly documentation.
- Procedural Writing: The writer must be able to create clear how-to guides, particularly for installation (using Powershell/Bash) and troubleshooting.
- Information Architecture: The project requires standardizing formats and organizing content logically for a developer audience (e.g., "Onboarding," "Infrastructure," "Troubleshooting") to improve findability .
- Template Adherence: The writer must be able to follow specific templates, such as the MSF Docs Single Page Design, which outlines a precise structure for content.
Tool Proficiency:
- Content Platforms: The writer must be proficient in using Confluence and GitHub as the primary documentation platforms.
- Collaboration Tools: Familiarity with Jira for project tracking and Lucidchart (or similar) for diagrams if necessary.
Soft Skills:
- SME Management: The "limited availability of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)" is the project's primary risk.
- The writer must have strong interviewing skills and the ability to work independently to proactively schedule and manage SME time.
Stakeholder Communication:
The role requires collaborating directly with senior engineering stakeholders, including Directors and Lead Software Engineers.