Technical Support Manager, Newspack
Newspack’s mission to help small and medium-sized news organizations publish great stories and find a path to financial sustainability in a moment when journalism faces immense challenges.
As a Technical Support Manager your job is to provide frontline assistance to the scores of news organizations hosted on our platform. You’ll work with editors, publishers and product managers to guide them in the use of the platform, help them address day-to-day operational needs and solve any technical challenges.
We have a vibrant Slack workspace where clients regularly interact with one another as well as with the dozen-plus members of our team.
Your style is to get things done while reducing friction for your colleagues and clients, to respond rapidly when called upon, as well as being proactive. You view our clients as partners, not just customers, and pride yourself in establishing long-term relationships.
A typical day involves:
- Troubleshooting a wide variety of technical issues that arise because of software bugs, configuration issues or layout and styling problems, using a combination of email, Slack and Zoom.
- Coaching clients on the optimal use and configuration of the platform.
- Helping customers identify and implement the best tools for the task.
- Building awareness of the latest product enhancements.
- Working with Newspack account managers and engineers to document, research and resolve a wide variety of product and engineering issues.
The work involves high-touch interaction with clients, often in fast moving situations involving complex issues. And you’ll have frequent contact with the team and with the wider Automattic community.
Required skills:
- Deep knowledge of WordPress. You’re not expected to have formal engineering skills, but it’s important to be able to read the code when diagnosing and potentially resolving problems.
- Excellent communication skills. We’re a distributed team, so frequent and clear written and verbal communication is crucial.
- Self-motivated work ethic. Self-starters who love taking initiative and seeing things through to completion do well on our teams.
- Curiosity and the desire to learn. Keeping up to date with changing WordPress and news industry trends on behalf of our teams and customers, often training others once proficient. Flexibility is key.
- Proficiency and eloquence in written English. Additional spoken or written languages a plus.
Useful skills to have:
- A background in news is not required but highly desirable. At a minimum you need to be able to put yourself in the shoes of reporters and editors who are often working on deadline with limited resources.
- A strong understanding of the Web; including familiarity with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, REST APIs, HTTP, DNS, and SVN or Git.
- Experience working primarily in a customer-facing role, including support and training.
- Superb troubleshooting skills that help you take big problems and break them down into manageable pieces with elegant solutions.
- Understanding of issues around scalability and performance.
About Automattic
We are the people behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Jetpack, Tumblr, Simplenote, Longreads, and more. We believe in making the web a better place.
We’re a distributed company with more than 1300 Automatticians in 75+ countries speaking 90+ different languages. Our common goal is to democratize publishing so that anyone with a story can tell it, regardless of income, gender, politics, language, or where they live in the world.
We believe in Open Source and the vast majority of our work is available under the GPL.
Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion at Automattic
We’re improving diversity in the tech industry. At Automattic, we want people to love their work and show respect and empathy to all. We welcome differences and strive to increase participation from traditionally underrepresented groups. Our DEI committee involves Automatticians across the company and drives grassroots change. For example, this group has helped facilitate private online spaces for affiliated Automatticians to gather and helps run a monthly DEI People Lab series for further learning. DEI is a priority at Automattic, though our dedication influences far more than just Automatticians: We make our products freely available and translate our products into and offer customer support in numerous languages. We require unconscious bias training for our hiring teams and ensure our products are accessible across different bandwidths and devices. Learn more about our dedication to diversity, equity, and inclusion and our Employee Resource Groups.
How to apply
Support is provided 24/7 so an ability to regularly assist with weekend coverage, as well as some holiday and evening availability, will be a requirement. Our customers are global and rely on us to provide expedient support, at any time of day. This is a full-time position.
If this sounds of interest, follow the instructions below to submit an application:
Write a cover letter to let us know what you can contribute to the team. Proofread! Make sure to spell and capitalize WordPress and Automattic accurately. We are lucky to receive hundreds of applications for every position, so try to make the application stand out.
If you want to increase the chances of standing out then tell us where you heard about this position and what your thoughts are regarding:
- What makes for excellent enterprise-level customer experience?
- If a customer raises an urgent issue with very few details, tell us what steps could be taken with the customer and with the team to help the customer in a timely manner.
- Tell us some details about an exciting problem you’ve worked on. Did you create something and make it better, or were you able to resolve an issue through changing an aspect of it?
If you’re reading this on a site other than automattic.com please ensure you visit automattic.com/work-with-us for the latest details on applying.
