Director of Engineering

Summary

Join the Wikimedia Foundation as the Director of Engineering, MediaWiki and lead a team of approximately 25 engineers responsible for building, maintaining, and improving the MediaWiki platform. You will collaborate with the Director of Product on strategy, work with senior management on organizational development, and manage the engineering group's budget and expenses. This role requires experience leading large software engineering teams, managing backend platforms, and working with volunteer technical communities. The position involves hiring, coaching, and developing engineering managers and senior contributors. Success in this role demands proven success in the engineering process and product lifecycle, leading to significant, measurable impact. The Wikimedia Foundation is a remote-first organization with a competitive salary and benefits package.

Requirements

• Experience leading teams that manage software engineering lifecycle processes and services in an organization with 100+ software engineers
• Experience leading or managing a backend platform organization
• Experience managing organizational interaction with a community of volunteer technical contributors
• Experience building and leading diverse, multi-national and remote-first teams
• Proven success at all stages of the engineering process and product lifecycle, leading to significant, measurable impact
• Experience with managing managers
• Ability to travel up to 2-3 times a year
• Ability to work flexible hours with an organization spread across several time zones

Responsibilities

• Lead a group of teams working to build, maintain, and improve the capabilities of MediaWiki, the open-source software platform that powers Wikipedia and other sites
• Live and demonstrate our values by fostering a working environment and team relationships that are aligned in our mission, welcoming to everyone who shares our vision and values, curious and open to new ideas, focused on delivering great work, and constantly improving
• Hire, coach, develop, and empower engineering managers and highly senior individual contributors to enable their success in solving problems, delivering on team objectives, and coaching and developing their team members
• Ensure engineering delivery of the teams in the MediaWiki Engineering group
• Collaborate with the Director of Product for MediaWiki on roadmaps and technical strategy
• Participate with other senior managers & directors across the department to establish strategic plans, align towards common objectives, and solve complex problems
• Participate in organizational development of methods, techniques, and evaluation criteria for projects, programs, and people to ensure the greatest impact for the Foundation
• Plan, staff, budget, and manage expense priorities within the cost center for MediaWiki Engineering
• Collaborate and take joint responsibility with fellow Engineering leaders to ensure the stability, reliability and optimal performance of production environments and services

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience contributing to or managing open source projects and communities, or experience with open governance (IETF, W3C, etc.)
• Familiarity with MediaWiki
• Experience working with (high-traffic) systems powered by large, monolithic code bases
• Experience editing Wikipedia or contributing to other wiki projects
• Experience working with internationally distributed teams or organizations

Benefits

• 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$ 172,976 to US$ 269,298 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