Ably30
Senior Developer Experience Writer
Is this role open to you?
London
Confirm work authorization, visa sponsorship and location requirements with the employer.Our everyday digital experiences are in the middle of a realtime revolution: chatting alongside a livestream, getting realtime financial updates, or working with colleagues in a shared online space. Consumers now expect realtime as standard, and Ably powers a large part of it.
We put developers first. Our products help teams build, extend, and deliver realtime digital experiences, delivering over 700 billion messages to more than 2 billion devices every month. Teams at HubSpot, Fin, Dialpad, NASCAR, Sportsbet, and General Motors all build on Ably.
Working at Ably means helping build the infrastructure that will shape the next generation of the internet. More of what people do online is becoming live, shared and interactive, which only makes what we build more relevant and more necessary. AI is the latest place that shows up. There's still so much to build, and we'd like your help with it.
About this role
Thousands of developers around the world use Ably's SDKs and APIs to power realtime features in their applications. The Developer Experience team is responsible for ensuring that Ably is a platform that exemplifies great developer experience, and is a reference point that other companies aspire to.
As our Senior Developer Experience Writer, you’ll be contributing directly to this goal; helping developers to quickly understand Ably, build confidently and ultimately succeed with the platform. At its core, this is an AI-focussed role; you’ll be in charge of setting up the foundations that empower engineers to produce first-class developer documentation with AI at scale. You’ll use AI to automate checks, maintain quality, and allow for rapid iteration in the content itself, as well as in the documentation platform. You’ll still be setting the standards for technical content across the business, and using your expertise to shape the information architecture.
This is a modern take on technical writing; you’ll be using AI to both increase your own output, whilst also increasing the velocity of other contributors. The same core values still apply though - ensuring that users can quickly understand and succeed with Ably.
Day to day you will
- Use AI to produce quality content. You’ll write reusable prompts and skills that docs contributors can use to ensure their content meets Ably’s quality standards.
- Define and uphold content standards. You'll help define what great looks like; from docs structure and style to making sure that PRs are always exceeding standards. You’ll leverage AI to check for technical accuracy, and make sure that content always assists developers in learning and succeeding with Ably in the fastest and easiest ways possible.
- Build engaging educational content templates. You’ll lead by example by producing reference content that others can use as a pattern to write similar content. This will be in the format of templates and skills that team members can leverage.
- Empower engineers to write great content. You'll coach and support engineering contributors to ensure that they’re always producing accurate, well-structured, developer-friendly content.
- Champion effective AI use. You'll promote the use of AI for efficiency, while maintaining a sharp eye for quality ensuring content meets editorial standards, is technically accurate, and is free from AI-generated patterns that undermine trust or clarity.
- Maintain and elevate the docs platform. You'll take responsibility for shaping the documentation platform's components, structure and tooling. This includes making sure content is logically structured, and easily navigable, and that it helps external developers understand Ably in new and exciting ways.
We'd love to talk if you have
- Proven success creating technical content for developers, such as documentation, API references and guides; with a portfolio that others have visibly learned from.
- Experience reviewing and giving feedback on technical writing, with the ability to coach others to improve their craft.
- Experience and a desire to work in an AI-forward environment. Experience in automation, working with agents and producing quality content at scale is a bonus.
- Experience of using AI tools as a core part of your workflow for writing, research and coding, as well as understanding their output and limitations.
- Familiarity with APIs, SDKs, and modern web development tools, with the ability to read, write and reason about code examples in at least one programming language (ideally JavaScript).
- Strong instincts for developer experience, particularly around onboarding, and a genuine desire to produce experiences that delight developers.
- A proactive, self-directed mindset with the ability to take ownership of projects end to end, from ideation through to completion.
- Experience at a startup or growth-stage company, or the adaptability to thrive in a fast-paced, agile environment with a focus on rapid iteration, with excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.
Bonus points if you have
- Experience in maintaining and shaping a documentation platform or developer portal.
- Familiarity with information architecture principles and content strategy.
- Familiarity with git-driven workflows for managing content changes.
- Some knowledge or understanding of event-driven architecture.
What’s it like to work at Ably?
You'll join a team of around 60 people, working directly alongside senior engineering and leadership. No layers, no bureaucracy, and real ownership from day one.
Remote-first
We hire the best people wherever they are across the UK and Europe, trust them to own their work, and share decisions and feedback openly. Twice a year, in February and August, we all meet in person, and we expect everyone to be there.
Remote-first comes with trade-offs. On one side: flexibility, no commute, long stretches of focus time, and a wider pool of people to hire from. On the other: it can feel isolating, relationships take effort to build, and you miss the chance conversations an office creates. As our only recruiter, you'll need to manage your own time and stay close to the hiring managers and candidates you work with.
If you do your best work with trust and autonomy, this will suit you. If you'd rather have an office around you every day, it probably isn't the right fit.
Our six values shape how we work day to day:
- Open for all. We default to sharing openly: source, decisions, and feedback, with open minds to match.
- Tech needs humanity. We build with empathy, for colleagues and developers alike.
- Even the best do better. We keep raising our own bar, driven by curiosity, not complacency.
- Bias for action. Once we know enough to act, we act, rather than waiting for certainty.
- Dependable by default. We take real ownership of what we ship and what we promise.
- Bold creativity wins. We treat big constraints as a reason to think differently, not less.
You can read more about how we defined these values on our blog, and see the team behind them on our careers page.
Diversity, inclusion, and belonging at Ably
We believe our differences as individuals are what make us great. Our people are at the heart of what we do, and we encourage everyone to be their most authentic self at Ably: we see inclusivity and openness as fundamental to our long-term success. We encourage applications from all backgrounds regardless of age, disability, gender, sexual orientation, parental status, race, religion, educational background, or neurodiversity. Ably has an amazing opportunity ahead of us, and we want anyone to be able to contribute to it.
If you enjoy working as part of a technology company, value open source, and love solving hard problems, we'd love to hear from you, regardless of whether you fit the job description exactly or not. If in doubt, drop us an email;; we're happy to give you advice on your application.
What you'll get
- A remote-first and flexible work environment. Our London office (next to Old Street) is there whenever you want it. Aside from our company get-togethers, you're welcome to work wherever suits you best.
- Equity. We're a growing start-up, and we want everyone to share in the company's success through our EMI share options programme.
- Enhanced holiday allowance: 28 days of paid annual leave (27 regular days, plus a day off to enjoy your birthday).
- Enhanced parental leave, so you can spend time with your new family member: up to 16 weeks fully paid for primary caregivers and 4 weeks for secondary, depending on length of service.
- A home workstation budget of £500 on joining (and £150 per year after that), so your home office serves you well.
- A personal learning and development budget of £1000 a year, plus 5% L&D time during working hours to build your skills.
- Private healthcare with BUPA.
- A medical cash plan covering a range of medical and dental costs.
- Mental wellbeing coaching and counselling from Self Space.
- A monthly wellbeing budget via Juno.
- Life assurance and income protection.
- Access to Tech and Cycle to Work schemes.
- A weekly snack allowance for our end-of-week "Need to Know" meeting.
- A fully-paid one-month sabbatical after five years with Ably.
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