Owen Alastair Ferguson

owenferguson@gmail.com • linkedin.com/in/owenaferguson  

Editorial lead and content operations specialist with 25+ years across science/tech journalism, enterprise content, LLM and SEO. Builds scalable workflows, enforces style at scale, and turns complex research into clear, high‑performing narratives. Proven impact leading writers and editors, shipping same‑day content, and collaborating with stakeholders across product, marketing, and sales.

Core skills

Editorial strategy • Content operations • SEO & LLM on‑page optimization • Style‑guide governance • Copy editing & line editing • UX/content design reviews • Analytics‑informed headline testing • Stakeholder comms & client management • Pitch deck development • Grants & proposals • Workflow design • Team leadership & coaching • Vendor management • CMS & publishing tools

Experience

Global Top 5 Streaming platform (under NDA) — UI/UX Linguist

Remote • Oct 2025 – Present

• Manage a 30+ writer team creating movie, series, and episode synopses for a global video streaming platform with over 300M paid subscribers.

• Results: Root domain now ranks in SEMRUSH top 30 globally for all domain types. Year-over-year revenue up 17 percent. 

Global Top 100 SaaS platform (under NDA) — Executive ghostwriter, SEO & LLM editorial
Remote • April 2025 – Present

• Ghostwriting executive blogs for C‑suite and product leaders. Optimizing for search and LLM citation authority: structuring H2/H3s, applying schema (Article/FAQ), enforcing authoritative sourcing, building exact‑match internal anchors, and tightening link management across the site.

• Results: Increased tracked citations across AI assistants (LLM retrieval/citation) to draw over 300M visitors per month. Root domain now ranks in SEMRUSH top 100 globally for all domain types.

Outlier AI — LLM Test Engineer

Remote • December 2024 – Present

• Designing and maintaining regression-style evaluation suites to benchmark prompt and model performance across updates, tracking accuracy, tone consistency, and factuality through structured prompt sets and automated scoring.

• Results: Improved AI-judge evaluation workflows, comparing outputs across model versions, and analyzing judgment data to identify drift, improve prompt design, and refine LLM-driven editorial systems for reliability and scalability.

Phys.org — Senior Editor
Remote • Jun 2021 – Present

• Selecting and packaging academic science/medicine/tech stories for the web’s largest research news aggregator. Developing headlines, display text, and art assets.

• Results: Over 50M visitors/month, root domain now ranks as SEMRUSH #2 science site, top 750 globally for all domain types. 

Meriwether — Line & Copy Editor
Remote • Nov 2023 – Oct 2024

• Led editing for a data‑driven publicity agency; aligned copy to SEO briefs and campaign goals.

• Oversaw writers and managed strategies from conception through publication.

Streetwise Reports — Investment Specialist
Remote • Nov 2022 – Sep 2024

• Wrote 5,000‑word, research‑dense briefs on emerging investment opportunities, syndicated via Reuters and Bloomberg.

• Balanced depth, compliance, and readability for retail investor audiences.

Write Collective — Senior Developmental Editor (UX)

Remote • Sep 2021 – Oct 2022

Contently — Senior Financial Editor
Remote • Jun 2017 – Jun 2021

Fundable — Pitch Deck Editor
Remote • Nov 2018 – Aug 2020

Leaf Group — Senior Developmental Editor
Remote • Aug 2019 – Jun 2020

Earlier roles

Development Editor, Invention Resource International (2011–2015) • Freelance Editor, Elance (2008–2015; Top 1% provider) • Web Games Editor, ERPK Studios (2010–2011) • Managing Editor, PollsB (2009–2010; curated ~500 user polls/week) • Enterprise Support Editor, New York Fries (2005–2008; authored technical documentation; L1 helpdesk) • Web Advertising Editor, Yellow Pages (2003–2005) • Technical Writer, Intel Corporation (2000–2003; white papers) • Technical Writer, Toshiba Research Europe (2000–2003) • Section Editor, Plessman Publications (1999–2000) • Staff Writer & Copy Editor, The Eyeopener (1996–1999; Best News Story 1997; National Magazine Award 1998) • Radio Room Operator, Toronto Star (1998–1999) • Test Lab Editor, Canada Computes! (1997–1998) • Community Access Project Lead, Industry Canada (1996–1997) • Marine Cadet, Ontario Provincial Police (1995–1996) • Technical Officer, Industry Canada—WRED (1994–1995) • Deck Officer, Toronto Brigantine Inc. (1993–1995) • Technical Officer, Service Canada—REDI (1993–1994) • Legislative Page, Legislative Assembly of Ontario (1992)

Selected achievements

• Led QA across ~60 writers while enforcing 300+ style guides; cut edit cycles and improved consistency (Write Collective)

• Story‑edited investor decks supporting ~$146M in fundraising pursuits (Fundable)

• Managed high‑volume science/tech news packaging and publishing with same‑day turnaround (Phys.org & Leaf Group)

• Curated ~500 polls per week to drive community engagement (PollsB)

• Authored complete technical documentation and helpdesk workflows for a multi‑location enterprise (New York Fries)

Education

Honours Bachelor of Independent Studies, University of Waterloo — 2003
Bachelor of Applied Arts (Journalism), Toronto Metropolitan University — 2000

Tools & platforms

Google Workspace • CMS (various) • Grammarly • AP/Chicago/house styles • HTML • LLMs (Claude/ChatGPT/Gemini) • Project trackers (Asana/Trello/Jira) • Analytics dashboards • Microsoft/Adobe