The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. Our vision is a world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. We believe that everyone has the potential to contribute something to our shared knowledge, and that everyone should be able to access that knowledge freely. We host Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects, build software experiences for reading, contributing, and sharing Wikimedia content, support the volunteer communities and partners who make Wikimedia possible, and advocate for policies that enable Wikimedia and free knowledge to thrive.
The Wikimedia Foundation is a charitable, not-for-profit organization that relies on donations. We receive donations from millions of individuals around the world, with an average donation of about $15. We also receive donations through institutional grants and gifts. The Wikimedia Foundation is a United States 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization with offices in San Francisco, California, USA.
Summary
The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead the Wikidata Platform team — the group responsible for the structured data backbone of Wikimedia projects and a key part of the global open knowledge ecosystem. You’ll guide the development and execution of the Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) and related platform services that enable tools, features, research, and community workflows across the Wikimedia ecosystem and beyond.
This role combines technical leadership, people management, and strategic planning. You’ll support the delivery of scalable, reliable, and sustainable query infrastructure while fostering an inclusive engineering culture and partnering closely with product, SRE, and data teams. Working with your Product and Tech Lead counterparts, you’ll help shape the future of Wikidata’s query capabilities and ensure they meet the needs of millions of users and contributors worldwide.
This is a fully remote team and requires occasional travel. Your working hours will need to overlap with UTC+1 to UTC−5 time zones to accommodate members of the team and cross-functional partners. The team’s core overlapping hours are 16:00–18:00 UTC. This role resides within the Wikidata Platform team and reports to the Director of Product.
What You’ll Do
Team & Delivery Leadership
- Addresses issues of diverse scope where analysis of situation or data requires evaluation of a variety of factors, including an understanding of Foundation priorities & current business trends
- Lead timely, high-quality engineering delivery for WDQS and related query platform services, including large-scale platform or data migrations involving multiple teams and stakeholders
- Ensure reliability, performance, and sustainability of existing and future query infrastructure
- Oversee planning activities including estimation, resource allocation, and work break-down, and balance roadmap work with maintenance needs
- Triage incoming issues, bugs, and operational incidents
Technical & Platform Strategy
- Develop and drive long-term engineering strategy for WDQS, including lifecycle management, architectural tradeoffs, and future planning
- Partner with SRE and other Foundation teams to ensure operational excellence and alignment across the data ecosystem
- Safeguard privacy, security, and data integrity across query services
- Provide technical input on system design, complexity, estimates, and feasibility
People Management
- Hire, onboard, mentor, and support the professional growth and performance of engineers on the Wikidata Platform team
- Foster a collaborative, inclusive, and psychologically safe culture
- Ensure healthy team processes and rituals, time management, and sustainable on-call practices
Cross-Functional & Affiliate Collaboration
- Partner closely with the Product and Tech Leads to define roadmaps, priorities, work scopes, and deliver impactful outcomes
- Proactive dependency management—staying on top of the teams we depend on and the teams that depend on us
- Maintain strong, productive collaboration with Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE) product and engineering counterparts
- Communicate technical plans, risks, and progress clearly to internal teams, leadership, and external stakeholders
Skills and Experience We’re Looking For
- 5+ years of engineering management experience leading teams building API-driven or platform-level data services
- Experience collaborating closely with product and tech leads on software development teams that ship products with community input
- Experience building and operating large-scale, high-throughput products, with strong foundations in observability, incident response, runbook quality, and overall operational excellence
- Experience guiding software systems through their full lifecycle
- Strong people management skills including hiring, coaching, and performance management
- Experience working with data streams and data-intensive applications
- Experience navigating challenges related to privacy-sensitive data
- Ability to influence and drive results across multiple teams in a distributed organization
Qualities That Are Important to Us
- Commitment to Wikimedia’s mission and values
- Comfort with ambiguity, incomplete information, and navigating complex environments
- Strong and proactive written communication skills in a highly asynchronous, globally distributed workplace
- Collaborative problem solving with empathy, emotional intelligence, and openness to diverse viewpoints
- A pragmatic software development approach grounded in curiosity, continuous learning, and long-term thinking
- Preference for achieving outcomes through influence, collaboration, and team empowerment
- Experience delivering data platform capabilities or large-scale data infrastructure
- Prior experience working in a fully remote, geographically distributed engineering team
Nice to Have
- Experience with knowledge graphs or RDF/SPARQL
- Experience in open source, open data, or open knowledge communities
- Experience contributing to Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects
About the Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. Our vision is a world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. We believe that everyone has the potential to contribute something to our shared knowledge, and that everyone should be able to access that knowledge freely. We host Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects, build software experiences for reading, contributing, and sharing Wikimedia content, support the volunteer communities and partners who make Wikimedia possible, and advocate for policies that enable Wikimedia and free knowledge to thrive.
The Wikimedia Foundation is a charitable, not-for-profit organization that relies on donations. We receive donations from millions of individuals around the world, with an average donation of about $15. We also receive donations through institutional grants and gifts. The Wikimedia Foundation is a United States 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization with offices in San Francisco, California, USA.
As an equal opportunity employer, the Wikimedia Foundation values having a diverse workforce and continuously strives to maintain an inclusive and equitable workplace. We encourage people with a diverse range of backgrounds to apply. We do not discriminate against any person based upon their race, traits historically associated with race, religion, color, national origin, sex, pregnancy or related medical conditions, parental status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, or any other legally protected characteristics.
The Wikimedia Foundation is a remote-first organization with staff members including contractors based 40+ countries*. Salaries at the Wikimedia Foundation are set in a way that is competitive, equitable, and consistent with our values and culture. The anticipated annual pay range of this position for applicants based within the United States is US$132,439 to US$208,378 with multiple individualized factors, including cost of living in the location, being the determinants of the offered pay. For applicants located outside of the US, the pay range will be adjusted to the country of hire. We neither ask for nor take into consideration the salary history of applicants. The compensation for a successful applicant will be based on their skills, experience and location.
*Please note that we are currently able to hire in the following countries: Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Peru, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States of America and Uruguay. Our non-US employees are hired through a local third party Employer of Record (EOR).
We periodically review this list to streamline to ensure alignment with our hiring requirements.
All applicants can reach out to their recruiter to understand more about the specific pay range for their location during the interview process.
If you are a qualified applicant requiring assistance or an accommodation to complete any step of the application process due to a disability, you may contact us at recruiting@wikimedia.org or +1 (415) 839-6885.
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