Work history
Through my most recent roles, I’ve developed my skills as a technical writer working with APIs, SaaS, and fintech.
TrueLayer July 2022 - September 2024
I worked for TrueLayer as a Senior Technical Writer.
TrueLayer is a fintech company that develops payments APIs and user interfaces based on the ‘open banking’ regulations in Europe.
The main users of the documentation were both internal and external people who were integrating with TrueLayer’s APIs. This involved SMBs through to large corporate clients.
Summary
I was the lead technical writer in a fintech startup of about 300 people with a $1 billion valuation.
In this position, I displayed autonomy and initiative, working in an ambiguous environment. I had to apply skills in information architecture, API documentation, and introducing organisational change.
I maintained the entirety of TrueLayer’s integration documentation and API reference, including procedures, landing pages, references, release notes and more. I also worked with developers, writing UX text and API specifications.
I mentored a junior technical writer and acted as the scrummaster of a small agile team.
Key achievements
- Several refactors of the documentation IA as the number of pages grew over 3x. This addressed growing product complexity.
- Created new quickstart guides, integration checklists, and REST API client collections. This reduced time to live for clients, boosting revenue.
- Worked with staff engineers to develop an API specification monorepo. This automated publication, reducing overheads and keeping the reference up-to-date.
- Achieved 1st and 2nd place in the two annual hackathons I participated in. This required wide product knowledge and presentation skills.
- Improved the visuals of the docs site through HTML, CSS, and consistent Figma assets. This kept the site on-brand, and enabled more diagrams, flows, and HTML elements.
Anaplan December 2018 - July 2022
I worked for Anaplan as a Technical Writer.
Anaplan is a SaaS business intelligence company. Their product is spreadsheet-based and can be used by end users, but grows in complexity as the volume and types of data increase.
The documentation was used both by users learning the basics of the Anaplan product, and advanced users looking to optimise the memory performance of their models.
Summary
I was one technical writer in a Content Team of about 10 people in a fast growiong post-IPO startup. The structure of the team changed several times.
When I started the role, we had editors who reviewed all of our content and provided guidance. However, this changed to a more flat hierarchy and we introduced a content technology team and other more specialised roles.
In this position, I worked as a ‘semi-embedded’ writer in multiple development teams based in London, York, and San Francisco. In practice…
Key achievements
- A complete rework of our calculation function documentation (over 100 pages). This involved creating component-based templates that can be surfaced in the UI, developing a stakeholder review process, and onboarding several junior colleagues. The componentised content has now been surfaced in-product as a new feature.
- An update of our API documentation suite. This included building Postman collections, reviewing existing documentation, and converting specs to API blueprint format.
Freelance work 2014 - Present
Created a linguistic business, completing projects for SMB and enterprise-level clients. I have been doing this work since 2014.
Through this work, I’ve developed client communication skills and developed initiative, skills I apply in my technical writing roles.
Types of work completed
The types of projects I have worked on for clients include:
- Japanese to English translation and review of various document types:
- Ecommerce product listings
- Internal company materials and slides
- Employee education material
- Subtitling and timing Japanese interviews about foreign exchange trading
- Subtitling and timing Japanese market research interviews
- Writing blog content based on Japanese source materials
- Online elearning video script research and writing, and quiz creation
- Subtitling and timing English language videos
- Writing editorial content for a newspaper
If you think I could be a good fit for your project, please contact me.
Bupa Global July 2016 - December 2018
I worked for Bupa Global as a Document Content Specialist for over a year. Before that, I worked there as a Customer Service Consultant.
Bupa Global is the premium international insurance of the British health insurance brand Bupa. As such, it has higher expectations around user experience and SLAs, alongside increased regulatory complexity. This meant that there was a large volume of operational documentation, with had to be clear and effective.