Student Technical Writer (NSIDC) wanted!
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), http://nsidc.org, part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder, serves as a national information and referral center in support of snow and ice research. Our mission is to make fundamental contributions to cryospheric science and disseminate data and information that advance our understanding of the Earth.
Position Overview
The Student Technical Writer will work closely with the NSIDC technical writing team to document and publish scientific data sets. Regular tasks include creating and maintaining user guides, metadata records, and associated web content; updating internal documentation; recording and posting weekly meeting minutes. The student assistant may also be involved in special projects as they arise.
The student reports to and is supervised by a Technical Writer and Data Support Specialist. As such, the student may occasionally be involved in data support activities with the User Services Office, such as registering and communicating with data users, running data usage metrics, testing data ordering and delivery tools, and maintaining data help articles using an online content management system
This position has a flexible work schedule and the potential for employment throughout the student’s college career. This job can be performed remotely, and will necessarily be remote during the ongoing pandemic. We do, however, require students to work during business hours (weekdays between 8 am and 5 pm Mountain Time); after-hours or weekend work will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Pay Range: $12.32 - $16.00 hourly
Avg number of hours/week: 15-20 hours [Students may only exceed 20 hours/week during the summer break, pending availability of workload]
Preferred start: February 2021. Preference will be given to applicants who can make a one- to two-year commitment.
Responsibilities
Basic Job Duties:
- Write, edit, and update data set documentation (Word/PDF user guides, NSIDC websites, etc.) with feedback from technical writers
- Support data stewardship by creating and updating metadata records
- Support special projects where Technical Writer expertise is requested
- Pick up trouble tickets sent to the technical writing team via JIRA
- Monitor Operations’ maintenance schedule and publish server downtime notifications accordingly using NSIDC’s website content management system
- Help maintain the technical writer’s internal website on Confluence, including the writer’s style guide, workflow schema, and weekly meeting minutes
What We Can Offer
Pay Range: $12.32 - $16.00 hourly Avg number of hours/week: 15-20 hours [Students may only exceed 20 hours/week during the summer break, pending availability of workload] Preferred start: February 2021. Preference will be given to applicants who can make a one- to two-year commitment.
Requirements
Required Qualifications:
- Undergraduate or a graduate student in a STEM field, or six hours of advanced writing courses and two years of science/technical writing
- Thorough understanding of grammar, punctuation, and style
- Aptitude for learning new tools, such as a content management (e.g. Drupal) and project management (e.g. JIRA, Trello) systems
- Willingness to learn new concepts and skills
- Strong attention to detail
- Ability to meet deadlines with minimal supervision
- Ability to work well with others and to accept direction, supervision, and performance feedback
- Strong work ethic
Preferred Qualifications:
- Basic conceptual understanding of remote sensing data
- Advanced knowledge of Microsoft Word and conversions to PDF
- Comfortable running shell and Python scripts, or willingness to learn
- Comfortable handling scientific file formats, such as HDF, GeoTIFF, netCDF, etc.