JP-Focused Support Editor

Tofugu is looking to hire a native Japanese-speaking Support Editor to help improve the clarity, accuracy, consistency, and overall quality of WaniKani’s Japanese learning content. This role focuses on handling issues and suggestions contributed by WaniKani learners and team members.

The Work

• Contribute to decisions about what changes should — and shouldn’t — be made to existing WaniKani content.

• Create and improve Japanese-only content, including context sentences, collocations and pronunciation audio. For pronunciation audio, pay careful attention to pitch accent, which should be standardized to the 東京式 pitch accent system.

• Collaborate with English-speaking team members to create and improve English content, including translations of Japanese content, and explanations of radicals, kanji and Japanese vocabulary and expressions.

• Participate in decisions about parts of speech labeling and which meanings and readings to assign to kanji and vocabulary, including which answers should be allowed, warned, or blocked.

• Plan and refine WaniKani item level progression, making thoughtful tradeoffs while anticipating how changes affect learning flow, difficulty, and consistency across the system.

• Update and publish content on production using the internal WaniKani admin.

You

• You have native-level proficiency in Japanese. More than that: you have in-depth knowledge of the Japanese language, and are able to create natural Japanese content with exceptional accuracy in terms of word use, grammar, and so on.

• You communicate clearly and efficiently in English, especially in writing.

• You can engage in nuanced discussions about language use.

• You are comfortable collaborating in a remote, async environment.

• You use creativity, vivid imagery, real-life examples, humor, and irreverence to convey nuanced points in easy-to-understand, conversational language.

• You think critically and make sound decisions. You have exceptional research skills and you know how to gather the right information, weigh tradeoffs, and explain your reasoning clearly and concisely.

• You think beyond the task in front of you. You consider edge cases, and knock-on effects.

• You care about getting the details right because you know small decisions can affect how thousands of learners understand Japanese.

• You’re detail-oriented, but you also know when something is "good enough" and it's time to move on.

• You’re highly autonomous. You work independently, stay organized, and make steady progress. You’re comfortable digesting detailed documentation on your own, and applying it in your work.

• You’re comfortable using technology to get work done and willing to learn new tools as needed. This might include working with spreadsheets, or editing audio files.

• You’re interested in how people learn and how to improve learning transfer.

• You have strong experience writing and editing in Japanese and, ideally, in English. This can be experience outside of paid employment.

• Ideally, you’re familiar with how WaniKani works and you have experience teaching, and creating educational content, but these are not required.

Pay and Details

Job Type: Contractor (up to 20 hours/week)

Work Hours: Flexible

Work Location: Remote, worldwide

Pay: $44.93/hour to $49.43/hour depending on experience

For an idea of how we work, take a look at Tofugu’s Principles. (The Principles are a little out of date and some links are broken, but they give you a rough idea.)

How to Apply

Submit the following in PDF format:

• Your resumé or a resumé-style document summarizing your experience.

• A cover letter-like document explaining why you’re applying, how you’ll measure success, and how you’ll help Tofugu help learners.

• Your completed work challenge.