The range is intentionally wide; final compensation depends on the candidate's experience, qualifications, technical skills, and applicable government-contracting rates.
About the role
The S1000D / IETM Technical Author writes the procedural, descriptive, and operational content that lives inside Extense's structured technical manuals and IETMs. You will translate engineering data, SME interviews, drawings, schematics, and Engineering Change Notices into clear, accurate, configuration-controlled data modules. You will work closely with the S1000D Architect, illustrators, troubleshooting authors, and aircraft / equipment SMEs to make sure every procedure is technically right, safely sequenced, and properly tagged.
Key responsibilities
- Author and revise S1000D data modules — procedural (remove / install / inspect / test / service), descriptive, fault-isolation, and IPD-related — in accordance with project Business Rules and BREX.
- Translate Engineering Change Proposals, redlines, SME notes, and source drawings into clear, properly sequenced maintenance procedures.
- Apply correct warnings, cautions, notes, tools, consumables, support equipment, personnel requirements, and figure references.
- Tag data modules with correct applicability / effectivity values for the supported aircraft or equipment variants.
- Coordinate with technical illustrators to specify and validate figures, callouts, and hotspots.
- Respond to customer review comments (Government, prime contractor, and internal QA) and disposition them in coordination with SMEs and the IETM Lead.
- Use the project CSDB to check out, check in, and progress data modules through the configured status workflow.
- Maintain authoring quality metrics: BREX-clean modules, low rework rate, low defect rate at QA.
- Contribute to the project style guide; surface recurring authoring issues to the S1000D Architect.
Required qualifications
- U.S. citizenship is required; selected candidate must be willing to undergo a federal background investigation.
- 5+ years of professional technical-writing experience, with at least 3 years authoring in a structured-content environment (S1000D, DITA, or equivalent XML schema).
- Hands-on experience authoring procedural maintenance content for aircraft, military vehicles, weapons systems, industrial equipment, or other regulated hardware.
- Demonstrated experience working from engineering drawings, schematics, parts catalogs, and SME notes.
- Working knowledge of S1000D data-module structure, information types, and applicability tagging.
- Experience with at least one S1000D authoring environment (Arbortext Editor, oXygen XML Editor with S1000D framework, XMetaL, or equivalent).
- Strong written English; ability to write controlled, unambiguous procedural language.
- Comfort interacting with engineering and maintenance SMEs to extract and validate technical content.
Preferred qualifications
- Direct experience on U.S. military aviation or rotorcraft technical-manual programs.
- Experience with MIL-STD-40051-1 IETM content.
- Familiarity with ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English.
- Background as an aircraft maintainer, field service representative, or aviation technician who has transitioned into writing.
- Experience authoring fault-isolation / troubleshooting procedures.
- Active U.S. Government security clearance.
Education
Bachelor's degree in English, Technical Communication, Engineering, Aviation, or a related field. Military technical-training background combined with relevant experience (7+ years) will be considered in lieu of a degree.
Apply for this role
Email careers@extense.co with the subject line EXT-TWA-2026-04 — S1000D / IETM Technical Author. Include your résumé, a short cover note describing your most relevant project, and (where applicable) two or three representative work samples or anonymized excerpts.