Job openings/Director of Features Engineering
This job opening has been closed. If you'd like to work with us, please see our current job openings.
Position
The Wikimedia Foundation seeks an experienced manager with a track record of leading distributed engineering teams. We are a roll up your sleeves, participatory organization, and the Director of Features Engineering should be willing and able to act as an engineer and architect, collaborator, mentor, manager, strategist and tactical implementer. Our Engineering Management Team members are responsible for developing a culture of collaboration, team empowerment and accountability, and this is particularly true of the Director of Features Engineering.
Required qualifications
Candidates should have the following type of experience and qualifications:
- Multiple years of experience in leading engineering programs, preferably of a high traffic web property, ideally built using open source software components
- Experience developing software for collaborative systems, social media, online community, and gaming environments
- Familiarity with a broad range of systems development environment, including: Squid and Varnish, Apache, Memcached, MySQL, PHP, Perl, Python and a broad range of open source components
- An understanding of various methodologies for designing, developing, deploying, changing, documenting and managing software development projects
- Prior experience with continually upgrading the skills of engineering teams through internal mentoring and external career development activities; demonstrated skills in engaging, motivating, coordinating and supporting both teams and communities
- A BS-equivalent degree in software engineering field or equivalent experience, with an advanced degree preferred
Personal characteristics
The successful candidate should be:
- A mission-driven individual with an understanding of, belief in and commitment to the societal benefits of freely-available information and of the free open source software movement and an ability to communicate that passion
- An independent and open-minded individual who values and appreciates diversity, input and collaboration from various constituencies
- An inveterate listener and explainer;
- A strong manager who will advocate for the needs the Features Engineering department and the organization’s infrastructure;
- Emotionally mature and self-reliant; someone who will thrive working in a small but growing team; an ability to tolerate a high degree of ambiguity, and to negotiate with people having sharply defined opinions while maintaining positive, respectful relationships;
- Someone with a sense of humor.
About the Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation got its start in 2003 and is the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia. Based in San Francisco, California, we currently employ over 150 staff and contractors globally. The Wikimedia Foundation is committed to creating a world in which every single human being can freely and easily share in the sum of all knowledge. Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation receive nearly 500 million unique visitors per month, making them the 5th most popular web property worldwide. Wikipedia is available in more than 280 languages, containing more than 25 million articles contributed by a global volunteer community of over 100,000 people. In an effort to continue our mission, we are hiring talented and creative individuals to join the team.
