Software Engineer - Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for product software engineers to join our team, reporting to product engineering management. As a product software engineer, you will be responsible for software engineering for our product user experiences. In this role, you will work in a mostly-remote environment, where we value teamwork and a consensus-oriented approach. You get to write open source code for collaborative experiences supporting over a billion users, and you get to do it at a place that believes we’re all more successful when everyone has a good work-life balance.

You are responsible for:

• Improving the Wikipedia product experience
• Iterating on new products and features through collaboration with designers and product managers
• Writing multilingual and accessible JavaScript, CSS, and PHP
• Creating and maintaining internet APIs with server scripting languages
• Instrumenting components to monitor feature and quality characteristics
• Leveraging caching and persistence technologies

Skills and experience:

• 4+ years related professional experience in functional programming or OOP
• Experience building user-friendly features and software components with good performance
• Focused software engineering: you enjoy writing unit and integration tests, proactively addressing security and code review feedback, and thoughtfully balancing architectural tradeoffs

Qualities that are important to us:

• A desire to make meaningful contributions to knowledge equity, free culture, and open access
• An emphasis on communicating clearly in both synchronous and asynchronous channels

Additionally, we’d love it if you have this:

• Fluency in one or more regional languages in Africa, Asia, or Latin America
• Practical skills with Vue.js or React
• Project work in data science, machine learning, AI (especially on natural language)
• A history of open source contribution
• Bachelor’s, master’s, or doctorate degree in computer science, management information systems, or STEM field (or equivalent certification)
• Familiarity with Wikipedia / wikitext / markdown editing or content management systems (e.g., MediaWiki, Drupal, WordPress). We grow and care for MediaWiki and Wikimedia specific services. MediaWiki is an open source, PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript web application that powers Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation websites. It has been incrementally developed for over 15 years to become a richly featured wiki engine and the basis for hundreds of extensions and skins, and has a vibrant volunteer community. Our services utilize a number of technologies.

The following teams are actively seeking candidates:

• Abstract Wikipedia: We are building a new programming system, Wikifunctions, where a community will be able to write code functions in a multilingual way with multiple programming languages (Python and JavaScript to start). This will be a production grade function-as-a-service platform for Wikimedia volunteers to utilize as we work toward the larger initiative of symbolically generating natural language in all of Wikimedia’s supported languages for Wikipedia with use of Wikidata Lexemes and Wikifunctions entries.
• Campaigns: Our vibrant global network of Wikimedia organizers run content campaigns such as Wiki Loves Monuments, Art + Feminism, Wiki Loves Human Rights, and Wikimedia Asian Month that focus on new and experienced contributors, and are a key mechanism of content development on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, and other Wikimedia projects. Our work aims to improve the experience for campaign organizers and campaign participants, so they can more effectively take part in the Wikimedia movement.
• Structured Data: We are building user experiences and platform capabilities to connect structured data to Wikimedia content so that it is easier for both humans and machines to identify, classify, discover, and enhance. Through application of linked data we aim to make it possible to create richer experiences piecing together the content across multiple sources such as Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata.

The Wikimedia Foundation is…

• the nonprofit organization that hosts and 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, free of interference. We host 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 financial support 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.

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