Navigating the job market as a Technical Writer in 2026 | Write the Docs Pittsburgh

The tech job market is weird right now. Seven-round interview loops. AI screening calls. Ghost listings. And what do we even call ourselves now? Technical writers? Documentation engineers? Content designers? These problems affect everything from how you search to how you position yourself. Jill Shaheen spent the past year job hunting alongside 200 former AWS technical writers and managers. She distilled what that community learned into a practical field guide, built a custom job search tracking tool to manage the chaos, and eventually landed two competing offers. She's here to share what worked. This session covers what's working in the 2026 market: how to position yourself for modern writing roles and adjacent pivots, how to surface transferable skills without building five different personas, how to get past ATS filters, and what a human hiring manager looks for on LinkedIn once you do. Note: The slide deck was obscured during recording, so follow along with the presenter slides here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/....