Engineering Manager, Feature Engineering

Summary

The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for an engineering manager to join the Feature Engineering department, reporting to Nat Baca, the Director of Engineering, Reading Experiences. Within Feature Engineering, we work to improve the user experience for the readers and contributors of Wikimedia sites. Our readers are responsible for 25 Billion monthly page views, from up to 2 Billion unique devices. The Feature Engineering team also supports new and experienced volunteers working in 300+ languages with the tools they need to keep Wikipedia accurate and up to date on the contributors side. 

As an engineering manager working in this area, you will be responsible for supporting and driving the team’s efforts to enhance the user experience across Wikimedia sites, helping to evolve our engineering strategy, hiring new headcount, and identifying and working with future audiences. You will collaborate with cross-functional partners, manage technical initiatives, and ensure the successful delivery of key projects that impact billions of users worldwide. This position will focus on building a healthy team culture, coaching and growing engineers, and fostering partnerships with other disciplines.

You are responsible for:

• Collaborating with your team and cross-functional stakeholders to plan, prioritize, and delegate work, balancing project goals with technical requirements and team skillsets.
• Driving execution–ensuring projects are on track, key performance metrics are being met, and work is being actively unblocked.
• Communicating proactively on progress, risks, and outcomes to stakeholders.
• Ensuring the engineering team is engaged and productive, and understands the big picture of the project and how their efforts contribute to it.
• Coaching your team, conducting performance reviews, providing career guidance, and building a professional and inclusive work culture.
• Managing risk and succession planning for the project, documenting and implementing lifecycle management and best practices for the software we build.
• Interviewing, hiring, onboarding, and mentoring engineers with the goal of quickly making them productive and engaged members of your team.
• Participating in strategic direction-setting, team formation, and staffing allocation

Skills and Experience:

• 3-5 years of experience as an engineering manager or equivalent experience
• Technical expertise in fullstack web development
• Experience working with engineering teams with a focus on building user-facing web applications and services.
• An established track record and prior success in working with a multicultural, distributed team.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.
• Excellent interpersonal skills–the ability to interact constructively and develop productive working relationships with management, peers, direct reports, and communities, including non-technical staff.
• Experience with open source development methodologies and open source community.
• Robust analytical, problem-solving, and conceptual skills with the ability to deliver on detail as well as strategy.
• Must be comfortable with evolving requirements and priorities in a dynamic environment.

Qualities that are important to us:

• Experience with remote work and the level of engagement and communication it takes to build a geographically distributed team that is functional and healthy
• Experience with large-scale, global developer ecosystems and platforms and managing the risks and opportunities associated with them.
• Alignment with our mission and values.
• Resilience—we work on new and interesting problems in public and collaborative ways.
• Working together for outcomes, and being willing to change course.
• Sharing a culture of constructive criticism and respect.

Additionally, we’d love it if you have:

• Experience editing Wikipedia or with the Wikipedia, Wikidata, or Wikimedia Commons communities or other collaborative enterprises.
• Familiarity with MediaWiki.
• Experience supporting and leading teams developing Web-scale deployments in javascript and PHP.

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$127,714 to US$200,943 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 Arab Emirates, 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 [email protected] or +1 (415) 839-6885.

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