Engineering Manager, Wikidata Platform Job at Wikimedia Foundation

Engineering Manager, Wikidata Platform

Wikimedia Foundation

Location:

Category:
IT - Software Development

Contract Type:
Not provided

Salary:

132439.00 - 208378.00 USD / Year

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Job Description:

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.

Job Responsibility:

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
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
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
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

Requirements:

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
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

Additional Information:

Job Posted:
January 22, 2026

Employment Type:

Fulltime

Work Type:

Remote work

Wikimedia Foundation - All Job Offers

Job Link Share:

Engineering Manager, Wikidata Platform

Wikimedia Foundation

Location:

Category:
IT - Software Development

Contract Type:
Not provided

Salary:

Job Description:

Job Responsibility:

Requirements:

Nice to have:

Additional Information:

Job Posted:
January 22, 2026

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