Who are technical writers, and what do they do?

In my last post, I explained how documentation isn’t just a collaboration between technical writers and engineers but a shared responsibility among multiple stakeholders: product managers, UI/UX designers, web developers, software engineers, legal teams, and sometimes editorial teams.

After reading the post, a friend reached out and asked: If documentation is the responsibility of all these stakeholders, then who are technical writers, and what do they do? This is a fair question that deserves a thorough answer, so I’ve decided to write this follow-up post to address it.

The simplest answer is that technical writers are writers who apply intersecting skills to make complex information usable. These intersecting skills depend on project needs and include product management, software development, information architecture, project management, quality assurance, editing, and customer support.

Intersecting with product management

Since documentation is a key product component, technical writers need to have some product management skills. Having these skills allows them to collaborate effectively with other stakeholders and advocate for the product’s users in ways that individuals outside of the field may not expect.

Strategic thinking is one of these important skills. Technical writers use it to set documentation goals and make sure their work supports business needs. They look at how documentation fits into the bigger product picture and try to spot user needs early. This helps them decide what to write, when to write it, and who to write for.

Another skill is user advocacy, which requires them to develop high empathy and a deep understanding of user needs. Technical writers often serve as the voice of the user within product discussions, identifying gaps between what users need to know and what the product team assumes they already understand.

Finally, like their product manager counterparts, technical writers apply collaboration and communication skills. Within cross-functional teams, they bridge gaps so that product decisions account for documentation needs and documentation supports product outcomes.

Drawing from software development

While technical writers don’t usually write code as their main task, they need familiarity with programming concepts and tools such as markup languages, version control systems, content management systems, static site generators, and basic scripting. With this technical foundation, they can collaborate effectively, contribute to documentation infrastructure, and communicate in the same language as their engineering colleagues.

In practice, many technical writers discover that programming skills are not optional but essential. The more they can explore APIs, read source code, and trace functionality on their own, the more credibility and respect they earn within their organizations.

As Fabrizio Ferri-Benedetti explains in his article Learning to code as a technical writer, technical writers are more like devlings. They are developer-adjacent professionals who understand enough about code to be dangerous in the best possible way. Becoming a devling allows them to use developer tools directly, which reduces reliance on engineering time and keeps documentation moving without bottlenecks.

They are also expected to write sample code, develop scripts for automating repetitive tasks, and set up documentation linters for consistency. These programming responsibilities require not just understanding syntax, but also grasping basic software design principles, debugging techniques, and code quality standards that align with the engineering team’s practices.

Shaping information architecture

Many people who aren’t technical writers may find it surprising that few roles require information architecture skills as much as technical writing. If asked, they might point to UX designers, UX researchers, librarians, or information architecture specialists. Yet one of the most essential and recurring tasks of technical writers is structuring information into intuitive, discoverable, and usable knowledge systems.

To do this, they must understand how users think, how they search for answers, how they scan and digest content, and how they navigate complex hierarchies. They create taxonomies that make sense to users, design navigation systems that guide them efficiently, and structure content to support both linear reading and quick reference.

Coordinating like project managers

It’s hard to find a good technical writer who isn’t also a capable project manager. Documentation projects are rarely simple: they involve multiple stakeholders, tight deadlines, and shifting priorities. Without strong planning and coordination, even the best content may fail to reach users on time or in the right format.

To manage this complexity, technical writers develop the same organizational discipline as project managers. They juggle multiple projects at once, coordinate with subject matter experts, and keep review cycles moving despite competing demands.

But organizational discipline alone isn’t enough. Technical writers also need to monitor progress and adapt as conditions change. That means spotting risks before they escalate, communicating status updates, and adjusting scope or timelines without losing sight of quality. Ultimately, they take responsibility for the entire documentation lifecycle: scoping requirements, planning schedules, coordinating reviews, publishing deliverables, and maintaining content over time.

Ensuring quality like QA

Quality assurance is one of the most critical yet underappreciated aspects of technical writing. Technical writers act as quality gatekeepers, testing both the products they document and the instructions they create to ensure accuracy, completeness, and usability.

When testing product functionality, technical writers bring a user-centered lens. They verify not only that features work as designed but also that they behave as users would expect. This helps to uncover usability issues, edge cases, and gaps between intended functionality and real-world experience.

Their QA responsibilities extend to documentation itself. They test every code sample, validate screenshots and links, confirm setup instructions, and walk through step-by-step procedures to ensure they produce the promised results.

Beyond individual content checks, technical writers often build and maintain QA processes for documentation systems. They create quality standards, implement review workflows, and establish feedback loops for documentation.

Refining like editors

Many technical writers are editors in training. When they aren’t creating new content from scratch, they are refining existing documentation, shaping it into clear, accurate, and user-focused resources. They take inputs such as engineer notes, product specifications, support articles, or marketing copy and transform them into clear, user-focused documentation.

They create and maintain style guides to ensure consistency across documentation. For example, they may refine phrasing to make it more accessible, enforce terminology guidelines, or standardize formatting across different document types. This editorial skill ensures that the documentation is coherent and professional, and that it reflects the same tone and quality standards as the organization’s other outward-facing materials.

Listening like customer support

Since one of the many duties of technical writers is identifying user pain points, they constantly go through support channels and other feedback mechanisms to identify problems. They look for issues that arise from a lack of documentation or from incomplete or unusable documentation.

For instance, a technical writer might monitor support tickets or forums and notice a recurring question about a specific feature. This signals that the existing documentation for that feature is either missing, hard to find, or not clear enough. A technical writer can then create new content or update the existing documentation to answer that question proactively.

In some cases, they also help in directing users to the right resources to solve their issues since they are often the primary custodians of the organization’s knowledge base.

Wrapping up, technical writers are multidisciplinary professionals who bridge disciplines to make complex information clear, accurate, and usable. They adapt their skills to fit organizational needs while keeping their core mission firmly in focus. Ferri-Benedetti captures this multidisciplinary nature perfectly in his article, Technical writing isn’t a dead-end job, it’s a landing pad:

…composite professions such as technical writing bridge the gap between discrete crafts and bring them together through hybridization.

Technical writers thrive in this hybridization. And that is precisely what makes the role both challenging and indispensable.