Principal Technical Writer
Microsoft
Principal Technical Writer
Multiple Locations, United States
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Overview
We are a team of product designers, UX researchers, content designers, and technical writers. Together with our PM and Engineering partners, we design product experiences that are trusted, human-centered, and easy to use, enabling our users to manage, protect and secure their digital environments with peace of mind.
Security represents the most critical priorities for our customers in a world awash in digital threats, regulatory scrutiny, and estate complexity. Microsoft Security aspires to make the world a safer place for all. We want to reshape security and empower every user, customer, and developer with a security cloud that protects them with end-to-end, simplified solutions. The Microsoft Security organization accelerates Microsoft’s mission and bold ambitions to ensure that our company and industry is securing digital technology platforms, devices, and clouds in our customers’ heterogeneous environments, as well as ensuring the security of our own internal estate. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world.
We’re looking for a security architect with spectacular communication skills, or a seasoned technical writer who thinks and operates like a security architect to help lead the creation of customer-facing technical guidance across critical security domains—from data protection and identity management to cloud security, zero trust architectures, and emerging AI security practices. In this role, you’ll translate complex technical concepts into clear, actionable guidance that helps customers secure their environments with confidence. Whether it’s outlining best practices for protecting sensitive data or demystifying the latest cloud security features, you’ll be the expert turning deep technical knowledge into practical guidance that a wide range of audiences can understand and use. Your work will not only educate and empower customers but also set a high bar for clarity and quality in our security recommendations.
We’re seeking a collaborator who can work effectively across multiple disciplines to drive alignment on security best practices. In this role you’ll partner with product engineers, IT specialists, content writers, and other stakeholders to ensure our guidance is technically sound, consistent, and aligned with overall strategy. You should excel at building consensus and communicating across technical and non-technical teams, confidently bridging the gap between business goals and engineering realities. You should be comfortable talking to customers and teasing out their stated and unstated needs. As a senior leader, you pair deep expertise in security with excellent communication skills – you can dive into cryptographic details one moment and then articulate the big picture to an executive the next. If you are passionate about security and skilled at making the complex simple, you will thrive in shaping how we help customers navigate the challenges of modern security.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications:
- 10+ years experience in writing, content design, information technology (IT), or coding/programming OR equivalent experience.
- 3+ years project leadership/management experience.
Other Requirements:
The ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s or Associate’s degree in Information Science, Computer Science, English, Journalism, Technical Communications, or a related field.
- Deep expertise in Microsoft’s security solutions.
- 10+ years as an IT or Security or Solutions architect or as a technical writer creating customer-facing security solutions or architectural content for an enterprise audience.
- Experience with multiple IT workloads, such as Identity; Networking; Security; Governance, Risk and Compliance; or Device Management. Broad familiarity with enterprise cloud platforms and services.
- Organizational skills and the ability to drive collaborative content projects.
- Customer obsession, problem-solving skills, and attention to detail
- Ability to demonstrate agility around change and to adapt to dynamic environments or business needs.
- Effective written and verbal communication skills; ability to communicate effectively in a professional voice that is tuned to different audiences, as demonstrated by portfolio or writing samples.
Technical Writing IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $139,900 - $274,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year.
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay
Microsoft will accept applications for the role until September 24, 2025.
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Responsibilities
- Create world-class prescriptive technical guidance for web, in-product, and AI-mediated experiences. Words matter, and you’ll use the right phrasing and guidance to inform and empower our customers.
- Provide leadership and direction for crafting Microsoft’s security narrative for our customers.
- Create architectural diagrams or other visual collateral, as needed, to help deliver guidance.
- Partner with engineering leadership, marketing, documentation teams and other internal teams to identify strategic end-to-end customer scenarios drive content delivery for those scenarios.
- Drive cross-product content strategy for prescriptive Security guidance.
- Leverage an evolving AI toolset in the creation and maintenance of technical content.
- Review and use content data to help inform content strategy and develop your knowledge of customer needs and industry trends.