Earlier this month, I spent a morning with Jennifer, a technical writer I’ve known for a long time. She mentioned that she was planning to retire from her job, and that she anticipated that the company would have a hard time replacing her. Her remark was based on the fact that they hired her despite her advanced years because she had the unique background of technical writing in the manufacturing sector as well as a background in engineering.
In a time when technical writers are being laid off en masse--and slowly, quietly being hired again when companies discover that AI indeed cannot do the 85% of the job that doesn’t involve drafting content--Jennifer’s situation may seem to be an edge case. Here are a handful of observations that I’ve made over the past couple of weeks about content jobs.
Job titles are all over the map.
Jobs are getting reclassified.
Skill sets are changing.
Companies are waking up to systems-thinking.
An overarching theme of the current job market is that employers are looking for Technical Writers who do way more than documenting products and creating multi-channel outputs. Instead, they want staff who are, in effect, custodians of truth for internal AI engines.
An example from outside of the content industry is a conversation designer who said that her title no longer fits what she actually does. The LLMs now design the conversation; her role has pivoted to analysing how an LLM operates and improving its behaviour. In UX writing and technical writing, the writing part was only one among a number of capabilities needed, such as managing reviews, stakeholder management, and now quality control of the content to ensure it is clean enough to train custom LLMs.
Why we cling to traditional job titles
Yet the legacy titles persist. So why do these titles stick when it no longer reflects the primary focus of the job? I can think of three reasons:
Identity. Our professions become part of our identities. The title rolls freely off our tongues before we can stop to correct ourselves. We take pride in what we do. Terms such as Technical Communicator and Information Developer have been popular at times, but the reversion to technical writer persists.
Community. Our titles become a shortcut to convey a wealth of information. Industry professionals know what a technical writer does. They know what a conversation designer does. Or a UX writer. Or a content strategist. It helps us attach to communities and communicates a world of experience to our peers. (I’m prone to that, hanging onto “content strategist” because “kinetic information expert” is still opaque to anyone outside of the Kinetic Information Association.)
Findability. Job postings tend to use traditional titles until enough momentum builds for a replacement title. A recent job posting for a “Knowledge Manager (Technical Writer)” illustrates the transition of capabilities. Recently, a senior director said that he wanted to change the titles of his technical writers to reflect their actual function: Knowledge Management Experience Engineers. Internally, this is sure to boost the profile and credibility of the former tech writers; externally, it may be a harder sell to match their skills to other jobs being advertised.
Trends in naming and hiring
Though I’m not looking for a job – I’m happiest as an independent consultant providing services to select organisations that recognise the value that my expertise brings – I do keep a watchful eye on the market. The presentation I gave a year ago about the state of hiring in content strategy and technical communication needs an update. Here are a few unstructured thoughts about what I’m noticing in job postings.
Content jobs. Traditionally named jobs are being posted, though the job descriptions are changing. There is more emphasis on systems-thinking and technical skills for manipulating content to feed AI systems downstream. The actual writing is de-emphasised and capabilities such as stakeholder management, cognitive load management, content architecture, and user experience factor more heavily in the job postings, though the wording may not be as succinct. A recently recommended book by Jody Allard, Writing Was Never the Job: A Field Guide for Content Designers Right Now, covers the topic well.
Change of titles. Jobs such as “Information Experience Manager” (background in technical content or content strategy) and “Strategic Communications & AI Lead” and “Enablement Lead, Knowledge Work” and “Documentation and Content Capability Lead” and “Technical Writing Specialist” and “Knowledge Manager (Technical Writer)” and “Content Engineer” are turning up on LinkedIn. In other words, job titles are all over the map, as are the capabilities within those job titles.
Adjustment of skills. Many of the jobs being listed explicitly look for a technical writing background, and others might as well read: advanced tech writing background needed plus some additional skills for a particular role. The traditional skills needed, both analytical and technical skills, are rapidly evolving. The focus on systemic infrastructure is growing, as this is becoming critical when the job is less about drafting text and more about looking at structuring and semantically enriching content for effective, accurate retrieval by LLMs. From sweeping generalisations such as “be the custodian of truth for AI engines” to more specific “engineering how product knowledge is stored, organised, and retrieved across the enterprise”, these capabilities often translate into the hidden work that formed the backbone of technical writers.
Exposing hidden capabilities. I recently commented on a LinkedIn post that technical communication has always been bigger than writing. “It’s like calling a doctor a stethoscope practitioner. The title ignores the many big-picture things that they do and focuses on the 20% of the job that is the surface stuff that people can see. In this day and age of generative AI, a more accurate title would be Product Knowledge Experience Engineer (a term borrowed from Michael Iantosca).” The same goes for content strategists who are often management consultants specialising in content turnarounds. The title, which had been co-opted by those who think in terms of editorial quality, needs to be updated to recognise the complexity of the frameworks, such as the Content Integrity Model. Personally, I’ve moved away from the term “Content Strategist” to “Content Solutions Strategist” to more accurately surface the depth of work that I cover.
Overlapping disciplines. Traditional lines are blurring. A content developer, information architect, taxonomist, and user experience designer used to be discrete disciplines. Today, job descriptions ask for a set of skills that cross practice areas. This is a bit like asking for an ear, nose, and throat doctor who is also a dentist who is also a rhinoplasty surgeon because it all deals with the face. Recognition that each area of content is a speciality unto itself has been flattened into a jumble of skills. In the world of basic/better/best scenarios, the best scenario would be to have practitioners, with deep knowledge in their respective fields, working together. In the better (but not best) scenario, practitioners with deep knowledge in one area and more superficial knowledge in a complementary area, would work together. In the basic scenario, which I suspect is a lot of the job postings out there at the moment, there are generalists hired (with the expectation that they have varying degrees of knowledge in a number of areas) by organisations that think of product knowledge as a step above creative writing (and that is something I just heard this past month, so don’t come at me).
Taking ownership of the narrative
As social media influencers say: what a time to be alive! But seriously, this can be the moment for practitioners to take control of their narratives. The titles will keep shifting, and the job postings will keep muddling disciplines that deserve to stand on their own, but the expertise underneath is exactly what organisations now need and cannot easily replace. Managing the single source of truth, structuring content for trustworthiness, and keeping information clean enough for accurate retrieval is the hidden work that content practitioners have always done. The opportunity is to stop letting a legacy title describe only the 20% of the job people can see. Name the systems thinking, the architecture, the stakeholder management, and the quality control. Your LinkedIn history may say UX writer, technical writer, or content strategist, but your next title doesn’t have to. Adopt titles that reflect the work you actually do, translate your experience into the language of AI-ready knowledge, and make your capabilities impossible to overlook. The profession’s value hasn’t diminished; it has simply become more consequential. Those who make it visible will define what comes next.
AI disclaimer: The post was written by me from scratch. AI was used only to look for inconsistencies in my logic and for proofreading.