Wikimedia Foundation · 21 hours ago
Engineering Manager, Wikidata Platform
United States
Full-time
Remote
Senior Level
$132K/yr - $208K/yr
5+ years expThe Wikimedia Foundation is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead the Wikidata Platform team, responsible for the structured data backbone of Wikimedia projects. The role involves technical leadership, people management, and strategic planning to support the delivery of scalable query infrastructure while fostering an inclusive engineering culture.
Computer Software
Responsibilities
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
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
Qualification
Required
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
Preferred
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
Company
Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation encourages the development and distribution of free educational content with projects such as Wikipedia.
501-1000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Wikimedia Foundation has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (1)
2024 (4)
2023 (5)
2022 (3)
2021 (1)
2020 (5)
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageTotal Funding
$158.98MKey Investors
Alfred P. Sloan FoundationCraig Newmark PhilanthropiesGoogle.org
2020-01-01Grant· $2.1M
2019-09-10Grant· $2.5M
2019-01-22Grant· $1.1M
Leadership Team
Maryana Iskander
Chief Executive Officer
Denny Vrandečić
Head of Special Projects
Recent News
2026-01-19
2026-01-17
2026-01-17
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