UX Writer Lead

The world of finance is full of jargon. The good news is that Pleo is not strictly a finance product. We're used by thousands of people as a means to buy the stuff they need to do their job. The exchange of money for goods and services is a part of this. A more significant factor is knowing what you can buy, how to buy, and what to do once you've bought it.

It's Pleo's place to be clear and understandable. Sure, there are spaces to inject a bit of our brand voice – but not at the expense of clarity. Pleo is a means to an end; we get out of the way.

Naturally, most of our product strives for ultimate simplicity, but simplicity is complicated. Often we have to translate a complex business process into an easy interface – and in that interface, copy plays an integral role in its success. This is why our UX Writer Lead position is in the design team, working hands-on with designers to figure out the solution.

The Role

• The first full-time writer in our product team – with lots of room for career growth as the discipline grows within our company
• Create clear, consistent, and impactful copy across all of our product interfaces
• Work closely with our brand content writers to reflect Pleo's brand in our product where appropriate
• Improve the writing capabilities of our Product Design team with processes, practices and education
• Take part in design reviews and give feedback and coaching when needed
• Make data-informed decisions around writing and its impact
• Collaborate with product managers, strategists, engineers, and researchers
• Educate the broader organisation, from sales to support, around proper product terminology
• Work with other writers from our Brand team to define and implement tone and voice standards
• Freedom to define your own approach for bringing great copy into our product and culture

Who are you?

• A fluent English speaker
• Experience in UX writing
• Ability to take complex concepts and make them easy to understand using simple, human words
• Ability to find potential problems that our customers might have with our copy / designs
• Experience working with software development, quality assurance, product design, marketing, and sales teams
• An eye for human-centric design and UX writing best practices
• A curiosity for how things work and a desire to make them better
• Familiarity with customer research

UX writing Pleo

It has somewhat of a mottled history. A product released initially in English, but founded by a Dane and an Italian, built by a Slovenian and a Faroe Islander, then tidied up in places a few years later by me, an Englishman (Hello!). Let's say the copy in the early version of the product was a little all over the place. There are still signs of this legacy today, and whilst occasionally amusing, it doesn't give the best impression to our customers who just want to get stuff done.

The cultural melting pot issues don't stop there either. Today, UX writing mainly falls in our Product Designers' laps – of which only a handful are native English speakers. This leads to a lot of inconsistency and sub-optimal writing. The issue is compounded when these lines are then translated into other languages by our translation team.

There is a great opportunity here to define how you want to work and how you want to ensure only the best of the best copy gets read by our customers; copy that is part of the solution and not just some icing on top.

It's nerve-wracking writing for a writer. Please see any mistakes in this post as a deliberate tactic to trigger you.

And here are some nice gestures that we do

• Get your own Pleo card, which means full autonomy and no out-of-pocket spending
• Ability to work remotely (anywhere between east coast of the Americas to European timezones)…
• …or onsite if you want to (Copenhagen, London, Berlin, Stockholm, Madrid)
• Catered lunch in our offices
• 25 days of annual holidays, on top of the standardised festive and bank-related ones, of course
• Great parental leave: 100% paid, 24 weeks for mums & 8 weeks for dads
• Loads of weird and wonderful niche communities to join in the company
• Once a quarter – in any normal year – our entire company gets together at a team camp.
• Continual learning and development opportunities
• Wild enthusiasm and encouragement from us if you want to host MeetUps, events, etc - we'll help (venue, food etc)