Software Engineer III, Content Transform Team

Software Engineer III, Content Transform Team

Summary

The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a software engineer to join our team, reporting to engineering management. As a software engineer, you will be responsible for engineering software that supports our product user experiences. In this role, you will work in a fully-remote environment (with occasional travel for team, department, or organization events), where we value teamwork and a consensus-oriented approach. You get to write open source code for collaborative experiences supporting over a half a billion pages accessed per day, and you get to do it at a place that believes we're all more successful when everyone has a good work-life balance.

On the Content Transform team, we work to support and evolve all things wikitext, the markup language behind Wikipedia. We aim to make wikitext easier to write, faster to parse, and less error-prone for humans. We also strive to support editing and content analysis tools with structured representations. We also maintain the web services associated with content rendering and transformation.

You are responsible for:

• Improving the Wikipedia product experience by fixing bugs and implementing new functionality in wikitext processing
• Iterating on new features through collaboration with fellow engineers, product managers, designers, client teams, and community members
• Writing PHP and JavaScript which supports hundreds of world languages
• 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:

• 2–5 years related professional experience in software engineering
• 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:

• Familiarity with the HTML5 spec and DOM manipulation
• Expertise in Node.js and related technologies (and some experience in GIS, OSM) 
• 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.
• Experience with one of: parser generators, interpreters, language runtimes, compilers, or bringing a language feature through a product cycle
• 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)

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$88,975  to US$139,056 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 recruiting@wikimedia.org or +1 (415) 839-6885.

More information

U.S. Benefits & Perks

Applicant Privacy Policy

Wikimedia Foundation

What does the Wikimedia Foundation do?

What makes Wikipedia different from social media platforms?

Our Projects

Our Tech Stack

News from across the Wikimedia movement

Wikimedia Blog

Wikimedia 2030