Senior technical writer/editor

We are staffing this role for a contingent project and identifying qualified candidates now. The position does not exist until the project is awarded. Candidates selected will be asked to confirm availability and sign a contingent commitment letter. No work or compensation begins before award.

Terms

Fully remote; occasional on-site work in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area may be requested. Work performed between 7:30am and 6:00pm Eastern, Monday through Friday, excluding federal holidays. Anticipated start September 30, 2026. Twelve-month base period with two twelve-month option periods running through September 2029. Approximately 1,880 hours per year in the base period and first option year, and approximately 1,588 hours in the second option year — roughly 36 hours per week, dropping to about 30 in the final year. Independent contractor paid by invoice, or W-2, negotiable.

Suitability

This role supports a federal accessibility program. You must meet federal suitability requirements to enter on duty. You do not need an existing clearance or federal suitability to be considered — background processing occurs after award. U.S. work authorization required.

Overview of the work

This is the editing seat on a federal Section 508 accessibility program. The program's job is to get technical accessibility practice adopted across a large organization that does not report to it, so most of what it produces must persuade as well as inform.

Specifically, you will:

• Provide expert technical editing for communications, web content, and other technical resources, editing for plain language, active voice, appropriate level of detail, consistency, and effective content organization, so that material is readable and easier for its intended audience to understand.
• Edit accessibility guidance written by specialists for audiences who are not specialists: program managers, contracting personnel, web teams, content authors, and executives.
• Adapt tone and register to the audience and the sensitivity of the subject. The same finding may need to reach a developer, a program director, and a senior executive in three different registers.
• Support the program's recurring reporting cycle, editing monthly, quarterly, and annual compliance reporting and topic-specific reports prepared for senior leadership, often on short turnaround.
• Hold written products to a consistent standard across multiple authors over a multi-year period.
• Ensure written deliverables meet Section 508 standards for electronic content, since everything this program produces is held to the standard it enforces.

Minimum Requirements

These are the stated minimums.

• Outstanding grammar, spelling, punctuation, and written command of English.
• Three years of editing experience.
• Demonstrated ability to adapt tone and style to a particular audience's sensitivity.

Also needed for this work

Not formal minimums, but the job is harder without them.

• Accessible document production: structured headings, reading order, alternative text, accessible tables, and tagged PDFs in Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat. All written deliverables on this program must conform to Section 508 standards for electronic content.
• Plain language practice, ideally against federal plain language guidance.
• Experience editing technical or compliance material for mixed technical and executive audiences.
• Comfort editing to a deadline that moves. Short-notice leadership reporting is a routine feature of this program, not an exception.
• Familiarity with accessibility, Section 508, or WCAG is welcome but not required. You will be editing accessibility content, not testing it.

This is a remote position.