Content Editor

Job Description

Tofugu is hiring a Content Editor to improve WaniKani’s existing content, create new content, and plan and carry out content-related projects. Content Editors think through and act on content suggestions, do research, develop ideas for improvement projects, and generally make WaniKani content better, day in and day out, little by little. Through many small changes, updates, additions, and subtractions over time, you'll make a big difference for a lot of learners of the Japanese language.

Responsibilities

• You will evaluate improvement suggestions from learners and members of the WaniKani team. Using critical thought, research, and sometimes debate, you will make decisions on what changes should (or shouldn't) be made.
• You will write mnemonics, explanations, and hints for the range of WaniKani content, including for radicals, kanji, and vocabulary items.
• You will make decisions about the meta data of radicals, kanji, and vocabulary. For example, you will decide whether a meaning should be visible, allowed, warned or blocked. You will add and change word types, research, write and update collocations and context sentences, and write and edit their translations.
• You will perform self-directed audits and research, and propose ways we can improve WaniKani's content. You will help to decide which changes will have the biggest impact on learning, and then implement the changes, usually in collaboration with other team members.
• You will work on small project teams to update and create content-related features.

Qualifications

• You have native-level English reading and writing ability. Beyond that, you have experience in writing, editing and proofreading, and you’re really good at it. You know how to use creativity, imagery, real-life examples, and humor to convey complex and nuanced points in clear, simple, conversational language.
• You have advanced or native-level Japanese reading and writing, and experience translating from Japanese to English. You understand the nuance of written Japanese and are able to translate it clearly and accurately, as well as improve existing translations.
• You have teaching experience and experience creating educational content, and you are knowledgeable and passionate about pedagogy and the science of learning.
• You have excellent critical thinking skills, and you consistently make good decisions by gathering all the right information to the right level of detail and applying those skills. You can also clearly explain the reasoning behind your decisions.
• You can think several steps ahead. One simple content change can have a cascading effect on many more items, so it is important to be able to evaluate multiple factors when planning changes.
• You are organized, productive, and able to do focused work and create tangible results. You are able to figure out on your own how to make meaningful progress even when the rest of your team is working in a different time zone.
• You communicate efficiently, and you understand the nuances of how communication is different in a remote-work environment. You are also excellent at giving and receiving feedback.
• Ideally, you have knowledge and experience of WaniKani and how it works, as well as experience using corpora, but neither of these is essential.

Hours for this role are flexible, though there will be times where you need to coordinate and meet with members of the WaniKani team. For an idea of how we work, have a look at The Tofugu Handbook.

If you think you would be a great candidate, you can apply by putting together the following:

• Your resumé or some resumé-like document, giving us an idea of your work history and experience. PDF format, please.
• A cover letter-like document, in PDF format. It can (and probably will) be more than one page. We'd like you to tell us why you're applying, how you'll measure success in the role, and why/how, specifically, you'll bring value to Tofugu.
• Your completed work challenge in PDF format.

About the Company

Tofugu is the Japanese teacher we never had.

Almost everybody at Tofugu has taken a Japanese (or English, or French, or whatever) class or had tutors. But we experienced a lack of explanation and had to move at the speed of the slowest students. We learned kanji by writing them hundreds of times because "that's just how it's always been done." We all thought there must be a better, more effective way to learn Japanese, even if it's not "traditional." So we began writing. We learned how humans actually learn and made WaniKani for learning kanji, because sometimes tradition is overrated.

To supplement our studies, we turned to textbooks and the Internet. Though practical, we found them to be overly-dumbed-down. "This is just the way things are," they said. When we dug deeper into linguistic papers, we found the answers we were looking for, but they were way too weedy and technical for the everyday Japanese learner. So we kept writing, and we've been bridging the gap between Japanese linguistics and you, the Japanese learner, ever since.

We are building tools and writing about the Japanese language for our past-selves: people who were (and still are) excited about learning. Then we are sharing everything we can with you. We want to be the Japanese teacher we never had, for you.

Tofugu

This is where everything started! We write about Japanese topics to help people who want to visit Japan, live in Japan, and/or Learn Japanese.

We do Japanese grammar guides, in-depth looks at Japanese vocabulary, Japanese resource and textbook reviews, interviews with interesting Japanese people, (weird) Travel articles.

WaniKani

WaniKani is a Japanese-kanji-and-vocabulary-learning web app with a simple goal: teach you most of the 2,000 jōyō kanji (meanings AND readings) as well as 6,000 vocabulary words in one to two years.

By using spaced repetition, mnemonics, interleaving, and more, we've put together one of the fastest and simplest systems for people who want to learn how to read Japanese.

Where We Work

Tofugu is a 100% remote company, meaning you work from wherever you want (as long as you can get a decent internet connection, often enough). Our colleagues work from home, from coffee/tea shops, and from co-working spaces. All positions are remote positions unless otherwise noted.