A release goes out at 4 PM on a Friday, and the only thing standing between confused users and a clear explanation is a paragraph of release notes someone had to actually write, on deadline, in a tone that matches the product. That someone is the Release Notes Writer.
This is a part-time, fully remote position open to candidates anywhere. There is no office involved and no location requirement tied to the role. Technical writing work like this has moved almost entirely remote over the past several years, partly because the job itself is naturally asynchronous, built around drafts, revisions, and deadlines rather than a shared physical space. Technical writing also tends to attract people juggling multiple part-time or freelance clients at once, so the part-time structure of this role fits naturally into that kind of schedule.
Products with a frequent release cadence, weekly or biweekly rather than a few times a year, tend to need this role most, simply because the volume of writing adds up fast once you account for every feature, fix, and small behavior change.
A bachelor's degree in journalism, English, marketing, or a related field is expected, along with 12 months of relevant experience and a portfolio of published writing samples you can point to. The portfolio matters more here than the degree itself; strong writing samples answer most of the questions a resume alone cannot. SEO knowledge does not need to be deep, but understanding why a heading structure or a plain-language summary helps a reader, and a search engine, find the point of a release quickly is genuinely useful.
Meeting deadlines consistently is listed as a skill for a reason; a release note that arrives after the release itself has already gone out defeats the entire point of writing it. Research skills matter just as much as the writing itself, since half the job is figuring out what actually changed before you can explain it clearly to anyone else.
A single release might touch three or four different features, each needing its own short, accurate explanation, and getting the technical detail right usually means a quick conversation with whoever built the thing before a word gets published. Turning an engineering ticket titled with internal shorthand into a sentence a customer will actually understand is most of the craft here. A ticket labeled with an internal codename and a one-line technical description might become, after a short conversation with the engineer who built it, a two-sentence note explaining that exports now run faster and no longer time out on larger files. Getting from one to the other is the actual job.
Some releases involve a breaking change that needs a careful, reassuring tone rather than a purely celebratory one, and knowing which register a given release calls for is a judgment call that comes with experience. Smaller, routine updates lean more matter-of-fact, while a bigger change usually earns a bit more context about why it happened at all.
Work is largely asynchronous and deadline-driven rather than tied to fixed daily hours, which suits the part-time structure of the role. You will coordinate with editors and product teams through shared documents and a handful of check-ins around each release cycle, and Remoteroles routinely places writers into arrangements exactly like this one, where output and reliability matter more than clocked hours. Being reachable around release windows, even briefly, is part of doing the job well, since a release that ships without its notes ready is a problem for everyone downstream.
Most weeks settle into a predictable rhythm tied to the release calendar, with a quieter research and drafting phase followed by a short, busier stretch right before something ships. Editorial feedback usually comes from a product manager or a lead engineer rather than a dedicated editor, so being able to take direction from someone who is not primarily a writer, and translate it into a cleaner draft, is part of the working rhythm here.
Compensation for this role runs at 81,000 dollars annualized. What is included depends somewhat on how the role is structured, but you can generally expect:
Freelance and project-based arrangements are common in this field, so it is worth confirming upfront which structure a specific opening follows before you commit to it. Writers who stay in this kind of role for a while often branch out into broader product content work, user guides, in-app copy, onboarding emails, once they have built trust with a product and engineering team.
Clean prose under a tight deadline is the core skill this role tests for. A writer who can take a dense engineering changelog and turn it into three sentences a non-technical user will actually read is exactly who this posting is aimed at. Editing experience matters too, since drafts rarely go out exactly as first written, and a second pass almost always catches something the first draft missed.
To apply, send a resume along with two or three writing samples, release notes or similar technical-to-consumer writing preferred. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, and strong candidates typically hear from us within a week or two. If a sample is behind a login or an internal tool, a short PDF export or screenshot works just fine in place of a live link, and a brief note on what you were asked to accomplish with each piece helps us read it the way it was intended.