Senior Technical Writer (Cortex) - Bay Area only
- Full-time
- Department: Product Management
- Job Country: United States of America
Company Description
Our Mission
At Palo Alto Networks® everything starts and ends with our mission:
Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.
Our vision is a world where each day is safer and more secure than the one before. We are a company built on the foundation of challenging and disrupting the way things are done, and we’re looking for innovators who are as committed to shaping the future of cybersecurity as we are.
Who We Are
We take our mission of protecting the digital way of life seriously. We are relentless in protecting our customers and we believe that the unique ideas of every member of our team contributes to our collective success. Our values were crowdsourced by employees and are brought to life through each of us everyday - from disruptive innovation and collaboration, to execution. From showing up for each other with integrity to creating an environment where we all feel included.
As a member of our team, you will be shaping the future of cybersecurity. We work fast, value ongoing learning, and we respect each employee as a unique individual. Knowing we all have different needs, our development and personal wellbeing programs are designed to give you choice in how you are supported. This includes our FLEXBenefits wellbeing spending account with over 1,000 eligible items selected by employees, our mental and financial health resources, and our personalized learning opportunities - just to name a few!
Job Description
Your Career
As a technical writer at Palo Alto Networks, you will help our customers deploy and use the Cortex products (XSIAM, Cloud, XDR, XSOAR, and XPANSE), the industry's first extended detection and response platform that runs on integrated endpoint, network and cloud data to reduce noise and focus on real threats. As customers deploy new security features, you’ll play a key role in documenting how customers can best adopt and use them in their security operations centers. By developing high-quality content, you will ensure their success in using our services, help our customers safely protect their endpoints, and respond to threats across their organization. Learn more about Palo Alto Networks Cortex products.
We are looking for a writer who is passionate about how our users experience documentation, curious about how the product works, and determined to develop the workflows and best practices that enable users to successfully deploy our technologies. This effort will directly help our users fully utilize the platform to protect their enterprise resources and generate fewer calls to our support organization.
Your Impact
Facility with Technology: You’ll be curious and hands-on with products, and commit to deep, ongoing learning to become a subject matter expert in our products, use cases, and customer outcomes. You’ll understand public and hybrid cloud deployments and infrastructures to empathize with customer challenges.
Documentation Expertise: You’ll create high-quality technical documentation that serves as the cornerstone of customer success. Think like and write for security administrators, articulating when, why, and how to use specific configurations, while adhering to style guides for consistent, cohesive, and effective content.
Innovation: You’ll be creative and experiment with new tools and ways to present information to enhance the user experience with products.
Information Organization: You’ll organize large amounts of technical details into easily searchable and usable topics, helping users solve security problems efficiently.
Initiative: You’ll propose changes and maintain a proactive, open-minded approach to resolving problems and delivering results.
Collaboration: You’ll work effectively with developers, QA, PMs, customers, SEs, and support to gather information, understand user problems, and demonstrate how products provide solutions. You’ll operate independently within a team environment.
Adaptability: You’ll prioritize tasks, adjust to mid-stream changes, and succeed in an ambiguous environment with competing demands.
Qualifications
Your Experience
BA/BS or equivalent experience required
Minimum 5 years of proven technical writing experience with topic-based writing and delivering content to enable a rich and engaging learning experience for users–for example, you have created in-app help, onboarding tutorials, use case examples, and best practices guides, that enable customer success- experience writing microcopy and content for blogs is a plus
Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to ask the right questions
Knowledge of cloud security or SOC platforms
Ability to see the big picture and proven track record of writing concepts and tasks from scratch
Strong initiative and ability to work independently and as part of a global team, work under pressure, and maintain focus while keeping a sense of humor
Ability to learn new technologies in a short time to find out not only how something works, but also when and why to use a configuration/setting
Demonstrated ability to work independently in a dynamic environment with distributed team members
Proficient with structured authoring and publishing (eg. DITA XML, Paligo, etc)
Video tutorial creation
Experience with source control tools, bug tracking/collaboration tools (GitHub/Jira/Confluence), and build tools
Active interest in emerging documentation technologies, including AI-augmented writing and editing
Additional Information
The Team
To stay ahead of the curve, it’s critical to know where the curve is, and how to anticipate the changes we’re facing. For the fastest growing cybersecurity company, the curve is the evolution of cyberattacks and the products and services that proactively address them. Our Product Management Team helps us do just that. This team provides behind-the-scenes support for our products by being a source of information for our systems engineers, staying on top of the environment we sell in, and helping to implement technical solutions based on our client’s feedback and needs. As threats and technology evolve, we stay ahead to accomplish our mission.
Compensation Disclosure
The compensation offered for this position will depend on qualifications, experience, and work location. For candidates who receive an offer at the posted level, the starting base salary (for non-sales roles) or base salary + commission target (for sales/commissioned roles) is expected to be between $118,000 - $191,500/YR. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here.
Our Commitment
We’re problem solvers that take risks and challenge cybersecurity’s status quo. It’s simple: we can’t accomplish our mission without diverse teams innovating, together.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for all qualified individuals with a disability. If you require assistance or accommodation due to a disability or special need, please contact us at [email protected].
Palo Alto Networks is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity in our workplace, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or other legally protected characteristics.
All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.