What is a Technical Writer at Bigbear?

As a Technical Writer at Bigbear, you are the vital bridge between complex engineering systems and the users who rely on them. Bigbear develops advanced, data-driven solutions, and our technical documentation must be as precise, scalable, and robust as the products themselves. You will be responsible for transforming intricate technical specifications into clear, accessible, and actionable content.

The impact of this position is substantial. Your work directly influences user adoption, reduces support overhead, and empowers internal teams to build upon existing architectures. Whether you are drafting API documentation for developers, system architecture overviews for stakeholders, or end-user manuals for complex operational tools, your clarity drives the product's success.

Expect a role that challenges you to dive deep into unfamiliar technical domains. You will not just be formatting text; you will be actively investigating systems, testing user flows, and collaborating directly with the engineers who build them. If you thrive on untangling complexity and translating it into elegant, user-centric documentation, this role will be incredibly rewarding.

Common Interview Questions

The questions below are representative of what you will face during your Bigbear panel interview. While you should not memorize answers, use these to practice structuring your thoughts. Focus on demonstrating your methodology and your ability to collaborate with technical teams.

Portfolio and Experience

The panel will want to see tangible proof of your abilities. Have specific examples ready to discuss in detail.

• Walk us through a piece of documentation in your portfolio that you are particularly proud of. What was your role in creating it?
• Describe a time when a project's scope or technical requirements changed drastically at the last minute. How did you adapt your documentation?
• Tell us about a time you identified a major gap in a company's documentation. How did you address it?
• How do you measure the success or effectiveness of the documentation you produce?

SME Collaboration and Stakeholder Management

These questions test your interpersonal skills and your ability to navigate the human element of technical writing.

• Describe your typical process for interviewing an SME. How do you prepare?
• Tell us about a time you disagreed with an engineer or product manager about the content or structure of a document. How did you resolve it?
• How do you handle situations where an SME is unresponsive or repeatedly misses review deadlines?
• Give an example of how you build trust and credibility with highly technical engineering teams.

Process, Tooling, and Technical Aptitude

Interviewers will probe your familiarity with modern workflows to ensure you can integrate smoothly into their systems.

• Explain your typical documentation lifecycle from initial request to final publication.
• How do you integrate your documentation work into an engineering team's Agile sprints?
• Walk me through your experience using version control (like Git) for documentation.
• Explain a highly complex technical concept to us as if we were non-technical account managers.

Getting Ready for Your Interviews

Thorough preparation requires understanding exactly what the Bigbear hiring team is looking for. We evaluate candidates across a spectrum of technical and collaborative competencies.

Here are the key evaluation criteria you should focus on:

Technical Acumen and Translation – This measures your ability to quickly grasp complex technical concepts specific to Bigbear's domain. Interviewers evaluate how efficiently you can learn new systems and, more importantly, how effectively you can translate that complexity into simple, digestible documentation without losing accuracy.

Stakeholder Collaboration – As a Technical Writer, you rely heavily on the knowledge of others. We assess your ability to build relationships with engineers, product managers, and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). You can demonstrate strength here by sharing strategies for interviewing busy technical staff and extracting the information you need.

Information Architecture and Strategy – This evaluates how you structure information. Interviewers look at your ability to organize large repositories of documentation, design intuitive navigation, and maintain consistency across multiple product lines. Strong candidates discuss content reuse, taxonomy, and user-journey mapping.

Process and Tool Proficiency – We look for familiarity with modern documentation workflows. This includes your experience with docs-as-code environments, version control systems, authoring tools, and Agile methodologies. Highlighting your ability to seamlessly integrate documentation into the software development lifecycle will set you apart.

Interview Process Overview

The interview process for a Technical Writer at Bigbear is designed to be streamlined, respectful of your time, and highly collaborative. Candidates generally report the difficulty as average, with a strong emphasis on practical experience and cultural alignment rather than high-pressure testing.

Your journey will typically begin with a pre-screen call with a Bigbear recruiter. This is a conversational touchpoint to review your background, verify your experience, and ensure alignment on logistics and expectations. If there is a mutual fit, you will move directly to a comprehensive Teams video interview.

This core interview is typically a panel format featuring three key individuals: the hiring manager and two Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). This dynamic is intentional. Because you will be working alongside SMEs every day, the panel wants to see how you interact with them, ask questions, and establish technical credibility in real-time. Expect a blend of behavioral questions, deep dives into your portfolio, and hypothetical scenarios about extracting information from engineers.

This visual timeline outlines the typical progression from the initial recruiter screen through the core panel interview. You should use this to pace your preparation, focusing first on high-level narrative for the recruiter, and then diving deep into technical collaboration strategies and portfolio examples for the SME panel. While the process is efficient, the panel stage is dense and requires high energy and focus.

Deep Dive into Evaluation Areas

To succeed in the panel interview, you need to understand the core themes the manager and SMEs will be testing. Prepare to speak in depth about the following areas.

Documentation Strategy and Execution

This area evaluates the core of your craft: how you plan, write, and maintain documentation. The panel wants to see that you think beyond single articles and understand how documentation functions as a cohesive product. Strong performance means demonstrating a user-first mindset and a systematic approach to content creation.

Be ready to go over:

• Audience Analysis – How you determine the technical depth required for different user personas (e.g., developers vs. business analysts).
• Content Lifecycle – Your process for drafting, reviewing, publishing, and sunsetting documentation.
• Style and Consistency – How you adhere to or establish style guides to ensure a unified voice across Bigbear products.
• Advanced concepts (less common) –
  • Docs-as-code implementations.
  • Automated documentation generation from codebases.
  • Content reuse strategies using structured authoring (like DITA or Markdown snippets).

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Walk us through a time you had to document a feature from scratch with minimal initial requirements."
• "How do you balance the need for comprehensive detail with the user's need for quick, actionable steps?"
• "Describe your process for auditing and updating legacy documentation."

SME Collaboration and Information Extraction

Since your panel includes two SMEs, this is arguably the most critical evaluation area. The interviewers want to know that you can independently track down information without becoming a burden on the engineering team. Strong candidates show empathy for the SMEs' workload while remaining persistent and structured in their information gathering.

Be ready to go over:

• Interviewing Techniques – How you prepare for and conduct knowledge-transfer sessions with engineers.
• Handling Ambiguity – What you do when specifications are incomplete, outdated, or constantly changing.
• Feedback Loops – Your strategy for getting technical reviews completed on time without causing friction.
• Advanced concepts (less common) –
  • Establishing formal documentation SLAs with engineering teams.
  • Using asynchronous tools to extract knowledge from distributed teams.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Tell us about a time you had to work with an unresponsive or overly busy Subject Matter Expert. How did you get the information you needed?"
• "An engineer gives you a highly technical explanation that is completely over the target audience's head. How do you handle this?"
• "How do you prepare before reaching out to an SME with questions?"

Technical Aptitude and Tooling

While you are not expected to write production code, you must be comfortable navigating technical environments. The panel will evaluate your ability to understand the technologies Bigbear uses and your proficiency with modern documentation tools.

Be ready to go over:

• Version Control – Your experience using Git, branching, and creating pull requests for documentation updates.
• Authoring Environments – Familiarity with Markdown, MadCap Flare, Confluence, or static site generators.
• Agile Integration – How you track your work using Jira or similar tools and align with engineering sprints.
• Advanced concepts (less common) –
  • Reading and documenting APIs using tools like Swagger or Postman.
  • Basic scripting to automate documentation tasks.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Explain a complex technical concept you recently learned as if I were a non-technical stakeholder."
• "What is your preferred documentation stack, and why?"
• "How do you ensure documentation keeps pace with rapid Agile release cycles?"

Key Responsibilities

As a Technical Writer at Bigbear, your day-to-day work is a dynamic mix of independent writing, cross-functional collaboration, and project management. Your primary responsibility is to produce high-quality documentation, which includes user guides, API references, release notes, and system architecture manuals. You will spend a significant portion of your time translating complex engineering outputs into clear, structured content that empowers the end-user.

Collaboration is at the heart of this role. You will embed yourself within engineering and product teams, attending stand-ups and sprint planning sessions to stay ahead of upcoming features. A large part of your week will involve interviewing SMEs, testing features in staging environments, and seeking technical reviews to ensure absolute accuracy. You are expected to proactively identify gaps in existing documentation and champion improvements.

Beyond writing, you will act as a steward of the documentation infrastructure. This involves managing content repositories, ensuring version control protocols are followed, and maintaining the overarching information architecture. You will help enforce Bigbear's style guidelines, ensuring a consistent voice and formatting standard across all technical publications.

Role Requirements & Qualifications

To be competitive for the Technical Writer position at Bigbear, candidates must bring a blend of sharp writing skills, technical curiosity, and strong interpersonal abilities. The role demands someone who can operate independently in a fast-paced environment.

• Must-have skills – Exceptional written and verbal communication. A proven ability to translate complex technical concepts for varied audiences. Strong interviewing skills to extract knowledge from SMEs. Experience managing documentation projects from conception to publication.
• Must-have experience – A strong portfolio demonstrating a variety of technical documentation (e.g., user guides, API docs, release notes). Experience working within an Agile software development lifecycle.
• Nice-to-have skills – Proficiency in docs-as-code workflows (Git, Markdown, CI/CD integration). Experience with API testing tools like Postman. Familiarity with the specific technical domains relevant to Bigbear's operations (especially data analytics or defense-related tech if based near Annapolis Junction, MD).
• Soft skills – High emotional intelligence, persistence, adaptability, and the ability to influence without direct authority. You must be comfortable managing pushback and negotiating deadlines with busy technical teams.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Who will be interviewing me? You can expect a panel interview via Teams consisting of three people: the hiring manager and two Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). This setup is designed to evaluate both your functional writing skills and your ability to interact seamlessly with technical staff.

Q: Do I need to provide a portfolio? Yes. While it may not be explicitly requested in the initial screen, having a well-curated portfolio ready to share during the panel interview is highly recommended. Be prepared to screen-share and walk the panel through your structural decisions and the context behind specific documents.

Q: Is this role remote, hybrid, or onsite? While the interview is conducted via Teams, Bigbear job postings for this role frequently list Annapolis Junction, MD as a location. You should clarify with your recruiter early on whether the role requires onsite presence, hybrid flexibility, or if fully remote work is supported for your specific team.

Q: How difficult is the interview process? Candidates generally rate the difficulty as average. The process is less about trick questions or intense technical grilling, and more about proving you have practical, battle-tested strategies for producing great documentation and managing SME relationships.

Other General Tips

• Treat the Panel as Your Target Audience: When answering questions, especially technical ones, demonstrate your communication skills in real-time. Be clear, concise, and structured. The SMEs are evaluating whether they would want to explain their code to you on a Friday afternoon.
• Master the STAR Method: For behavioral questions (e.g., "Tell me about a time..."), use the Situation, Task, Action, Result framework. Be highly specific about the Action you took and quantify the Result whenever possible (e.g., "reduced support tickets by 15%").

• Showcase Your Curiosity: Technical writers must be fast learners. Don't be afraid to admit if you don't know a specific technology, but immediately follow up with how you would go about learning it.
• Emphasize the "Why": When presenting your portfolio, don't just show the final product. Explain why you chose a specific structure, why you used certain formatting, and how those decisions benefited the end-user.

Summary & Next Steps

Securing a Technical Writer position at Bigbear is a fantastic opportunity to work at the intersection of advanced technology and user experience. The role is critical to the company's success, ensuring that complex, high-stakes systems are accessible and usable. By preparing thoroughly for this process, you are already setting yourself apart as a strategic, thoughtful communicator.

Focus your preparation on the core themes of the panel interview: demonstrating your documentation lifecycle process, proving your technical aptitude, and showcasing your ability to build strong, productive relationships with Subject Matter Experts. Remember that the interviewers are not just looking for a good writer; they are looking for a collaborative partner who can untangle complexity with ease.

This compensation module provides a baseline understanding of what you can expect for this position. Use this data to ensure your salary expectations align with Bigbear's ranges before entering the final stages of the process. Keep in mind that total compensation may vary based on your specific experience level and location.

Approach your Bigbear interviews with confidence and curiosity. You have the skills to excel, and focused preparation will allow you to present your best self. For more insights, practice scenarios, and community advice, continue exploring resources on Dataford. Good luck—you are ready for this!