UX Writer
MBTA
Posted 2 years ago
At the Customer Technology Department (CTD), our mission is to apply modern principles of research, design, and technology to make our transit system easy for all riders to use. Effective and equitable public transit is essential to the social, economic, and environmental progress of Greater Boston.
The MBTA Customer Technology team is working to transform how people get around the Boston area.
We are a team of designers, engineers, product and content specialists charged with bringing novel ideas, modern standards and a user-centered approach to technology at the T. As the MBTA works to reinvent itself, we have a rare opportunity to craft the future of transportation for Boston and communities all around Eastern Massachusetts, as well as pioneer innovations for other transit agencies around the country.
Do you want to improve the daily transportation experience for 4.7 million people in the Boston region? Ready for the challenge? Then read on.
CTD is looking for a UX Writer to join our Product Design, Research, and Content team. You will be embedded with the Fare Transformation group, helping shape the future of how riders pay for MBTA transit services:
You will partner with our lead Fare content strategist and lead UX researcher to write for multiple communications channels that will help riders and internal administrators understand and use the new Fares systems. That will include writing for interactive web tools, explanatory web pages, targeted newsletters, and critical service emails and SMS messages.
You will work with our UX designer to test interfaces and content with critical audiences, users, and stakeholders. You will document changes and continuously improve the writing in each touchpoint based on regular research and testing.
As part of an agile product team, you will work with design, engineering, and product management to collaboratively find and evaluate needs and solutions.
You will help continuously evolve the project roadmap, respond to emerging needs, and help launch new experiences on time.
You will help maintain and evolve content guidelines by working closely with other writers from the Web Content and Digital Services writing teams.
We would love to hear from you if you have these qualities:
- You love solving sticky problems with human-centered thinking, and you love communicating solutions with language and storytelling.
- Systems thinking: You enjoy thinking about solutions that scale across an entire user experience, not just a singular moment.
- UX Writing: You are excited by writing for user experiences, digital interfaces, or service-based communications that balance voice, tone, clarity, and brevity.
- Content Strategy: Writing and editing content that’s human-centered comes naturally to you, and you can support your ideas with data.
- An Editorial Eye: You understand the importance of a content style guide and can help our team adhere to these standards across multiple user touchpoints.
- A Product-focused Mindset: You’re able to partner with product management to think about how content should balance user needs, business drivers, and technological capabilities, and you may assist with weekly sprint planning and task creation.
- Cross-Discipline Collaboration: CTD teams are generally interdisciplinary, so you’re able to work closely with product management, engineering, data specialists, and design teams in an agile environment.
Work Experience guidelines:
- Although we’re mostly interested in your ability to do the work, here are some guidelines on the capabilities and experience we think might be most suited for this role. Please keep in mind that these are advisory, and not required.
- Approximately 1 – 3 years of professional experience in UX writing, content strategy, writing and editing for websites, or similar
- Experience working in an agile development environment
- Experience writing for an ESL audience highly welcome
- Experience using online collaboration tools (e.g. Slack, Asana, etc.)
- Some familiarity with HTML and content management systems like Drupal
- Familiarity with UX principles, best practices for web content, and/or SEO
- Comfortable balancing competing stakeholder needs and deadlines
- Familiarity with the MBTA transit system as a rider
- Formal education in writing or editing (This could be a college degree, a bootcamp, a certificate program, or something else entirely)
Please include your resume and work samples/portfolio with your application. Thank you!
This is a full-time hourly position within the Customer Technology Department at the MBTA. We work with payroll vendors that offer benefits such as pre-taxed health insurance, 401k options, and paid sick time. After at least one year on the job, there may be an opportunity to become a salaried employee with the MBTA.
Diversity and inclusion are essential to us at CTD. We believe that we can only design and build tools for our riders if our team reflects the wide variety of people who use MBTA services all over eastern Massachusetts. We strive to be inclusive in our approach to both hiring and product development, and we strongly encourage applicants from historically underrepresented groups to apply for this position.