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Job Description

About the Role

Wirecutter is seeking a staff writer to join our beauty team.  

As Wirecutter’s beauty writer, you’ll be responsible for finding the best of the best through rigorous testing and reporting. You’ll write the majority of our in-depth guides across all beauty categories—research-heavy projects that can often take weeks or months to complete—and you’ll also have the opportunity to write shorter stories that complement our guides, like explaining how to choose the best products for someone’s hair type or writing an ode to a serum that’s making the rounds on TikTok. This role may also be responsible for some style-based content, but the focus will be on beauty. 

You have a firm grasp of all categories of beauty—from skincare to haircare to makeup—as well as strong knowledge of the beauty landscape, from emerging brands and social media trends to cult-status standbys. You’re a beauty enthusiast who knows how to apply a skeptic’s eye when reading marketing claims about a beauty product, and while you have a wide array of industry contacts, you also understand the importance of journalistic standards and integrity. You understand that beauty can be an act of self-care as much as it can be a utilitarian effort, and you’re passionate about cutting through the clutter to help people find the right products for their unique situations and thoughtful about making inclusive recommendations.

A successful person in this role will be comfortable collaborating with team members and editors, but should also enjoy spending a good portion of time working independently: researching, testing, writing, and responding to edits. As a Wirecutter writer, you’ll also recognize the importance of considering those with different needs and diverse perspectives when writing a guide or other piece of journalism. You will report to the senior editor of the beauty and style team. You will have the potential to be remote, though New York City-based applicants are preferred.

Responsibilities:

• Research, report, and write long-form guides and short-form posts on beauty; think creatively about sources, identify experts, and plan and conduct meaningful short- and long-term tests

• Request product samples and process their return

• Call experts and review academic journal articles and other scientific data; methodically scan user reviews and forums to find what truly matters to readers

• Collaborate with editors to conceive new content and formats and move ideas from pitch to publish     

• Collaborate with photo, video and illustration departments to produce visuals to support guides and short-form articles

• Partner with our discovery and audience teams to identify trends and outside experts worth profiling

• Work with our community team to respond to reader feedback and questions; work with our affiliate team to resolve stock issues on recommendations; work with our operations team on product orders and testing plans 

• May be required to attend trade shows and product news events as needed to build contacts and expertise in relevant topic areas

• Perform related work as assigned

Basic Qualifications:

• Minimum 5 years of professional writing experience and the ability to communicate with clarity and voice, and explain why one product is better than another in a natural, accessible, and detailed way

• A comprehensive knowledge of the beauty beat

• Excellent communication and task management skills in a remote work environment, with a distributed team that works across time zones

• Patience to work collaboratively through multiple rounds of edits and balance several reporting projects and deadlines simultaneously

• An inherent skepticism of marketing claims and a commitment to high standards of reporting and accuracy

• Knowledge of SEO from an editorial perspective and understanding of how to use web analytics data to make editorial decisions

• Must be comfortable with detailed research that involves gathering large amounts of data, organizing it in spreadsh