Technical Writer - Spacecraft & Manufacturing

About the role

Xona is seeking a Technical Writer to join the program team and support engineering and manufacturing across the company. The role involves producing and maintaining technical documents, developing work instructions, and coordinating documentation across geographically distributed teams.

Responsibilities

• Support engineering teams in producing and maintaining technical documents including ICDs, test procedures, design specs, and review packages.
• Attend design reviews and work directly with engineers to extract technical details and translate them into clear, accurate, and actionable documentation.
• Develop, review, and maintain manufacturing work instructions, assembly procedures, and SOPs for spacecraft production.
• Work across geographically distributed engineering and manufacturing teams to ensure documentation consistency, synchronization, and accessibility.
• Generate, edit, and maintain contract deliverable documentation, ensuring accuracy and timely delivery against contractual requirements.
• Develop and maintain Service Level Agreement (SLA) definitions, document escalation paths, and system configurations to support reliable on-orbit operations and ground system management.
• Maintain documentation supporting regulatory compliance, such as FCC/NOAA licensing and Orbital Debris Mitigation plans.
• Help establish and maintain the organization, versioning, and accessibility of technical documentation, ensuring the right people can find the right document at the right time.
• Develop lightweight documentation standards and templates that scale as the company and program grow.

Requirements

• 4–7 years of technical writing experience in aerospace, defense, hardware manufacturing, or a similarly technical field.
• Proven ability to write clear, accurate work instructions and SOPs for manufacturing or assembly environments.
• Comfortable working directly with engineers to extract technical content and translate it into clean, usable documentation.
• Self-directed and able to manage multiple documentation workstreams simultaneously in a fast-moving environment.
• Comfortable asking questions when requirements are unclear - we value clarity over assumptions.

Preferred Experience

• Documenting spacecraft, satellite, or precision hardware development programs.
• Supporting program reviews such as Preliminary Design Review (PDR), Critical Design Review (CDR), or Manufacturing Readiness Review (MRR) with documentation packages.
• Familiarity with manufacturing execution or quality management systems.
• Proficiency with documentation tools such as Confluence, Google Workspace, or similar.
• Interest in growing into a documentation lead or program management role as the team scales.