We’re hiring: Become our marketing/copy writer

We’re accepting applications for this job until next Wednesday, March 24 (midnight, CET).

We at Datawrapper want to help everyone create better charts, maps, and tables. To achieve this, we offer an online data visualization tool with which beginners and advanced users can create beautiful visualizations.

But the more feature-rich our tool becomes, the better we need to explain in a smart way how Datawrapper can be helpful, and to whom.

What we need you for

• explain our tool better to people who are just learning about us
• help them decide if Datawrapper is a good fit for their needs
• ensure that users have all the information they need and should have about Datawrapper – especially if they’re just starting out, but also if they’re long-term users.

We are looking for an experienced (copy) writer to join our team, 4-5 days a week.

You can join remote (in the timezones around Berlin, so GMT, CET or EET) or get an own desk in our Berlin office, as soon as the the team is back there after the Covid-19 crisis. We’re looking for someone who can start between April and August 2021.

What’s Datawrapper?

Datawrapper is a company/tool that enables people worldwide to build great charts, maps, and tables. We’re used by

• print and online news publications like The New York Times, Quartz, SPIEGEL, and The Times
• news agencies like Reuters and AP
• governmental institutions and NGOs like the United Nations, the European Commission, and the World Economic Forum
• financial institutions like Fitch Ratings, Moody’s and banks
• cities like Madrid, London, and New York City
• and many more, like statistical offices and design agencies

We’re a team of 15 people, mostly developers. Many of us have a journalistic background – and all of us are excited about visualizing data.

What you’ll do

Your job will be to tell potential users, users that just started using us, and long-term users what they should know about Datawrapper. You’ll be writing

• website content (example)
• transactional emails (e.g., the email users get when they sign up)
• feature announcements on our blog (example)
• newsletters
• stories about our customers after interviewing them (example)

You’ll be a big part of our marketing efforts. But we don’t want you to write for SEO, we want you to write for people: Conversational, easy-to-understand and respecting our reader’s time. Thanks to you, they’ll figure out as quickly as possible how to be successful with Datawrapper.

As a writer, you’ll work together with me, Lisa, the head of communication. I’ll give you feedback (and I hope you’ll give me feedback, too) and brainstorm new tasks with you. You’ll also work closely with our CEO David, who knows our sales side best.

Are you a good fit?

To make this job worthwhile for you to apply, here are the must-haves:

• You have great English writing skills. You love language. Grammar might not be important to others – but you care, deeply. You’ve already spotted a few mistakes in this blog post.
• You’re excited about good communication. “They could have said that better,” is something you think often. When you look at our website, you can’t help but think of all the things we could’ve said better.
• You’re tech-savvy. You don’t necessarily know how to code, but you find your way around software you haven’t used before. What happens when you click on that icon? You simply try it out.
• You pay attention to detail and prefer to “measure twice, cut once”. You don’t like making mistakes that you could have prevented with the knowledge you already have. You’re thorough and careful, even if that means you’re slower than the fast-movers.
• You’re self-organized. You’ll eventually be your own manager – deciding how to solve the problem in front of you, e.g. by gathering information from different people or by scheduling meetings when needed.

And here are the nice-to-haves:

• Design skills. We’re a company that enables others to create beautiful charts. Our marketing content should look beautiful, too. If you have a design for aesthetics, then that’s a big plus. (If not, be ready to learn about it.)
• Interest in data visualization. Datawrapper is a data visualization company – you’ll write about data vis a lot.
• We’re curious what other skills, talents and hobbies you have. Are you a video pro? Or an amateur coder? Did you study graphic design back in the days? Do your friends say you’re great with people? Let us know. We’d love for you to work on the things you’re excited about.

What to expect from working at Datawrapper

A happy work life! Datawrapper team members appreciate the shared feeling to do meaningful work, a high degree of freedom, their helpful coworkers, and a general nice work environment. We’ve started building a bigger team in 2017 and saw only one person quitting since then.

What we believe in

• People do a great job when they’re excited about something. Our head of customer success Elana fixes bugs herself, our support engineer Edurne took over our social media presence (e.g. Twitter), our CTO writes blog posts. We let people work on things they’re motivated to work on. (So please don’t apply if you’re not excited about writing!)
• Few meetings. We try to keep big meetings low in numbers and short. Instead, we believe in written discussions, good meeting preparations, and short 1:1 check-ins.
• Good work-life balance We won’t give you deadlines – we let you set and revisit them yourself. We don’t expect you to work overtime.

What you’ll get from us

• A competitive salary and 30 days of vacation (24 days for a four-day week).
• A yearly education budget of 2000 Euro to visit conferences, hire consultants or buy books and online seminars that make you smarter (1600 Euro for a four-day week).
• A laptop of your choice & a big external monitor.
• If you’ll join us in our Berlin office (eventually, after Covid-19): unlimited coffee, tea, and any sweets you like. Plus a big data vis library.
• Generally nice coworkers.

In addition, you’ll learn to work with data and how to create good visualizations. You’ll also get many insights into the world of product development and explore the life at, and culture of a friendly young software company.

How to apply

Does all of this sound like something you’d like to do? Great! We’re looking forward to hearing from you. To hire the best possible person for the job, we decided to give you three small tasks. Here are two of them:

Task 1: Website copywriting

We often use a content block containing a headline, subheadline, and a short text on our website. You can find examples here (look out for “Fully responsive” or “Custom styling”). Imagine we ask you to write one of these content blocks for our website to address data visualization designers working at small to mid-sized newspapers. They’ve never heard about Datawrapper but have created online and print graphics for their publication for months or years; some of them on their own (they’re pretty stressed about it), some of them in small teams. Explain how Datawrapper can help them and make them curious to learn more about our tool. You can find inspiration on our website and especially here.

Task 2: Language skills

Find all the grammar & spelling mistakes in this very job post – there also may be wrong word choices sprinkled in there. We write in American English.

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The third task is about your skills in long(er)-form writing. To save you time, we’ll ask you to work on that only when we’re happy with your take on the first two tasks.

Please understand that we don’t have the time to answer emails that don’t mention these tasks. (If you’re strongly opposed to speculative work for applications, get in touch and we’ll work it out.) Besides the tasks, talk a bit about yourself and how your skills & experience could be a good fit for this job. An attached CV won’t hurt. Writing samples won’t, either. And if you have questions for us, don’t hold back.

→ Send it all to jobs@datawrapper.de

We hope you apply, especially if you’re from a group that’s underrepresented in our office. (That includes women.)

We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

Lisa & the Datawrapper team