This would be Neat-o

I've never had the opportunity to learn DITA or XML. I have read about it, looked at examples of it, and tried to understand it, but, frankly, I just don't think of it as being any more valuable than, say, choosing to code HTML at work. I think I understand the appeal. I sincerely believe that writing in a structural way, with prescribed elements that have to follow other elements. For example, you might set up where you can't go from a "Title" to a "Procedure" without a "Introduction" section between them, meaning you can have:

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Title
Introduction
Procedure

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but not

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Title
Procedure

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I'm uncertain if that's a realistic example or not, but it's the way I think about it in my brain now. The only reason I am writing about DITA & XML this morning while my recently purchased ...And Justice for All (Remastered Deluxe Box Set) downloads this AM is simple. I received an email from [A], a company I'm vaguely familiar with and, as I often do, I look at the Careers page. I do this not because I want to leave where I work - far from it! It is just a habit I have. Anyways, I noticed the ad below on this page: https://simplea.com/About/Careers. I realize fully that I don't have the skills described below but it sure would be neat if I did!

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DITA XML Engineer - Indy

Type: Full TimeMin. Experience: Mid Level

Do you love making content intelligent?

[A] seeks motivated candidates with experience with content acquisition utilizing DITA to work on as a Content Engineer.  This is a client-facing role and you’ll work from mostly a home office but may involve occasional travel to a client location.

As a DITA specialist on our Content Engineering team, you will work with our practice to craft intelligent content structure for multi-channel delivery and increase the value of semantically rich content. You will participate in, or lead, client projects surrounding customer experience management and personalization.
You’ll define content structure, metadata, content reuse planning, taxonomy, and other content relationships.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Structuring content through building content models, taxonomies and metadata definitions
• Leading client discovery onsite, gathering details and organized data about the current state and desired future state
• Educating clients on the value of intelligent content, workflows around Content Engineering, and related topics meant to build a client’s internal resources and capabilities
• Bridging the gap for clients between content strategy, the CMS platforms, operations, and other customer experience technologies
• Collaborate on information architecture and UX prototyping
• Determine schema strategy and structural rules

Skills We Are Looking For

• XML design and development
• Defining XML Schemas (DTDs, XSDs, RNGs)
• Configuring and integrating XML components (parsers, XSLT processors, etc) into application environments
• Experience in both authoring topic-based DITA content and converting unstructured content into DITA
• Review and fine-tune content that has been converted by an automated conversion service.
• Share DITA experience with our team
• Ideally have experience creating DITA using an XML Authoring system integrated with a  Component Content Management System (CCMS).
• Experience closely working with developers (and translating their language/work product to non-technical audiences), especially in the area of API and developer documentation
• Experience with the DITA Open Toolkit (DITA-OT), developing / deploying / maintaining DITA-OT plug-ins
• Integrating the DITA-OT into application environments
• Developing / deploying / maintaining XSLT stylesheets
• Formatting XML using CSS3

Cultural Fit at [A]

• You love learning, you love teaching.
• You enjoy wearing multiple hats and roles, and titles are not important to you.
• You do top-quality work, manage quality, and make everything you touch better.
• You are comfortable working under strict confidentiality agreements and often behind-the-scenes.
• You are self-organized and manage time and resources well.
• You work alone well but communicate well within a team.

[A] is the Content Intelligence Service.

[A] is a distributed, private, professional services firm that provides strategic support for building content intelligence practices into organizations. [A] helps complex organizations establish content engineering standards and practices to compete in a multichannel, multimodal, AI-driven world.
[A] engineers intelligent content systems for CMS/CEM platforms, and offers integration, training, workshops and custom development. [A] helps clients value content as an enterprise asset, and enables future-ready content through use of the Master Content Model.

What’s Your Name, [A]gain?

Our name is easy. Just say “A.” The [A] brackets represent markup, microdata, content intelligence. The letter “[A]” represents the start, initiation, beginning of change. We are going to help change the world with intelligent content.

[A] Team Benefits

Being an [A]gent comes with its benefits. Work from anywhere. Advance your career on the leading-edge of the content and technology sciences. Earn a competitive salary, and for longtime [A]gents, participation in a profit-sharing plan. But many [A]gents find the best part of working as an [A]gent are the other [A]gents you work with and the culture at [A].

We take care of each other and we honor each other's work and contributions to the team. We work to make ourselves better and our [A] team better. We make efforts to adapt new technologies and methodologies that can help us optimize our time, and we expect you to collaborate on these efforts if you’re an expert on any of those fields. We communicate and reach out to other [A] players.  We love learning. We love teaching. We write. We code. We support each other. For the right people, working at [A] feels like coming home.

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