MediaWiki:Communityhiring-intro

Wikimedia's Community Department is Hiring!
(Extended) Deadline for first round of submissions: 9:00 PDT (17:00 GMT), August 6 2010.

(Another round will begin immediately with a new deadline.) Go to the Job openings page for positions in other departments.

The Wikimedia Foundation's Community Department collaborates with and serves the broad Wikimedia community -- including readers, donors and editors/contributors -- to encourage the health and growth of Wikimedia communities and the projects they create and manage.

This year, the Community Department will be hiring for a series of important senior and entry level positions. All positions will involve collaborating and communicating with Wikimedia project contributors and users intensively and publicly, grappling with many problems that no one has ever solved before, navigating technological and social challenges and opportunities, and dealing with a high level of complexity and uncertainty. Candidates should have extremely high levels of skill and comfort in communication (especially writing), qualitative and quantitative analysis, management and self-management. Candidates who are not already deeply immersed in online collaborative communities will have to show an aptitude for quickly gaining a deep understanding of our communities' technologies, practices, traditions and culture -- and to become trusted and productive members of the Wikimedia community and movement.

We are looking for candidates from all over the world. Wikimedia Foundation has a policy of hiring without regard to locale. If eventually accepted for a position, Wikimedia Foundation will assist with work visas and relocation costs.

Read more about what we're looking for below. If you think you'd be a good match for the Community Department, use the form below to tell us about yourself. This is not a formal application, it is the first step in an outreach process designed to identify some great candidates for Wikimedia Foundation positions.

Your information will be kept completely confidential and will only be viewed by hiring managers, human resources staff and possibly assisting consultants who are covered by confidentiality agreements. Because we have such a small staff, we cannot guarantee a response. Submitted data will not be retained for longer than a year. Besides the data below, we are also recording the timestamp and your IP address at the time of submission.

Who we're looking for

We are especially looking for:


 * Current Wikimedia community contributors and leaders,
 * Insightful observers of Wikimedia and other collaborative communities,
 * People with specialty skill sets (e.g. statistics, ethnography, and probably a lot other things we've never thought of),
 * People belonging to language communities of new and growing Wikipedias and other Wikimedia projects,
 * People with insight into reaching groups currently underrepresented in Wikimedia contributor communities.

Ideal candidates for positions at Wikimedia Foundation's Community Department:


 * Have a passion for online communities, self-organizing systems, open and collaborative enterprises, democratic and consensus based societies, and emergent and participatory governance structures -- and desperately want to see them succeed and prove the cynics wrong.
 * Have thought enough about this stuff to have their own opinions and theories on various problems and opportunities facing Wikimedia and other online communities.
 * Are equally strong dealing with qualitative and quantitative knowledge and research.
 * Are self-directed, self-motivated, efficient, upbeat, optimistic, and extremely good with people. Wikimedia Foundation staff face intense pressures in highly-demanding roles. While the Wikimedia Foundation team strives to be mutually supportive, it only works when each individual is self-driven to overcome the challenges they face.
 * Are knowledgeable about software development processes and with database and web technologies.
 * Are creative non-linear thinkers who will sometimes fight for seemingly crazy ideas by backing them up with logical argument and data.
 * Are systems-thinkers who love to think about workflow and technology systems inside organizations.
 * Are multilingual, especially in major world languages and languages with large or growing Wikipedias.
 * Have insights and experience reaching groups currently underrepresented in Wikimedia communities.