Christian Areas

A writer who uses his technical skills and love of learning to create a great developer experience

Experience

Postman

Senior Technical Writer
Mar 2024 Present
  • Wrote much of Postman's public-facing AI developer docs — including many of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) docs — and delivered them on tight deadlines. Continue to maintain them as the team adds features and enhancements.
  • Overhauled the Postman API Network docs to help API publishers get their API consumers to their first 200 OK response in the fewest steps possible.
  • Built a Next.js site that lists all of Postman's icons. The Postman Docs team uses the icons to add visual cues to the docs to improve the user experience.
  • Published an NPM package that's a Vale-compatible implementation of the Postman Style Guide. The team uses Vale to lint the docs locally and in GitHub with GitHub Actions — and ultimately ensures the docs adhere to Postman's style.

Apple

Senior Technical Writer, Special Projects
Sep 2023 Mar 2024
  • Designed a comprehensive workflow that manages the team's documentation lifecycle. The workflow includes a two-step review process and an automated method to flag outdated content.
  • Worked with cross-functional partners to write how-tos for users who collect data and test in-development products for Apple's research and development organization.

Sabbatical

Apr 2022 Sep 2023
  • Completed a 24-week, full-stack JavaScript developer boot camp. Led all team projects — and in one case made over 90% of the contributions to the codebase. Learned TypeScript shortly thereafter.
  • Finished a 5-course, self-paced Python specialization.

Apple

Senior Technical Writer, Apple Pay
Aug 2019 Apr 2022
  • Functioned as Apple Pay server engineering's sole technical writer.
  • Wrote several documents from scratch, including one that explains the system behind Apple Pay Later.
  • Worked with engineering managers and engineers across Apple Pay to gather requirements for a new docs-as-code solution to centralize Apple Pay's API specifications.
  • Designed the docs-as-code solution. It sources Markdown and OpenAPI files from multiple GitHub repos, and uses web hooks and a CI/CD pipeline to publish the latest updates to teams across Apple. The solution supports fine-grained permissions, and gives users an easy way to create text-based message sequence diagrams.
  • Interviewed nearly 50 candidates to hire Apple Pay server engineering's second technical writer.
Senior Technical Writer, Employee Productivity
Jul 2015 Aug 2019
  • Wrote in the Apple voice for Apple employees — guides and how-tos for everyday users, new employees, managers, and other audiences.
  • Referenced the Apple Style Guide, Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), Chicago Manual of Style, and other resources to maintain consistency across content.
  • Managed and mentored writers.
  • Led major, cross-functional projects — such as the complete overhaul of one of Apple's main internal sites — and subsequently iterated to improve the user experience.
  • Wrote SQL queries to generate reports. Used the data to answer questions and drive decisions.

MGT

Documentation Manager
Oct 2013 Jul 2015
  • Authored key documents from scratch to support the startup, including a 150+ page internal control system (ICS), information security policies, anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) policies, and more.
  • Wrote functional specifications for user registration, know your customer (KYC), and deposit and withdrawal flows.
  • Developed 20+ SQL queries to output all financial and operational data — registrations, logins, deposits and withdrawals, gaming activity, liabilities, and other metrics.

Skills

  • Languages: Bash / JavaScript and TypeScript / JSON / Markdown / Python / Regex / SQL / YAML
  • Specifications: GraphQL / gRPC / JWT / MCP / OpenAPI
  • Command-Line Tools: Git / GitHub CLI / Brew / NPM / Vale
  • Databases: MongoDB / MySQL / PostgreSQL / SQLite
  • Frameworks: Next.js / Node.js / React.js
  • Cloud Deployments: AWS / Google Cloud / Vercel
  • Apps: Confluence and Jira / Figma / Postman / Terminal and Warp / Cursor and Visual Studio Code / Xcode

Education

  • Specialization Certificate, Python for Everyone | University of Michigan (Coursera)
  • Certificate of Completion, Full-Stack JavaScript Developer | UC Berkeley Extension
  • MPH, Epidemiology (Coursework Complete) | Emory University
  • BA, English and Premed | UC Berkeley