Job openings/Software Developer Ford
From the Wikimedia Foundation
YOU ARE ...
.. a passionate software engineer with well-rounded experience building usable, scalable and secure web applications, and a desire to contribute to a community-driven, mission-oriented open source project. Ideally, you already have some experience with MediaWiki or comparable open source web applications like Drupal or WordPress. The idea that your contributions to the MediaWiki codebase will lead to more contributions of freely licensed educational media to Wikimedia Commons resonates with your desire to achieve impact through your work. You're systematic and creative, and willing to put in extra hours when required to contribute to the project's success.
You're able to work very autonomously in a small team, and the idea of getting your feet wet in the MediaWiki community through a first time-bound project appeals to you.
Job Title
Software Developer
Employment Duration
From October 2009 till July 31, 2010
Reports To
Program Manager
About the Multimedia Usability Project
The Multimedia Usability Project was realized by a grant from the Ford Foundation. The goal of this initiative is to make it easier to contribute to Wikimedia's multimedia repository, Wikimedia Commons. This includes improvements to the media upload interface, the workflow and documentation for choosing an appropriate license, the metadata interface, and the integration of Wikimedia Commons into Wikimedia's other projects, including Wikipedia.
More information: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Ford_Foundation_Grant_July_2009
Job Description
The core responsibility of this position is to improve the usability of the media uploading process to Wikimedia Commons, re-architect meta data, and create a tracking mechanism to measure impacts of media distributed from Commons. The successful candidate architects, develops, tests and deploys new features and improvements of the MediaWiki software for Wikimedia Commons by working closely with the interaction designer and peer developers of MediaWiki.
Responsibilities
- Create implementation prototypes based on design concepts
- Propose software design solutions and obtain consensus from senior and peer tech teams
- Develop, test, and deploy new features and improvements to the MediaWiki core and to MediaWiki extensions
- Collaborate in designing and implementing QA processes including multi-lingual and performance tests
- Work closely with operations staff to ensure proper integration with testing and production systems
Required Qualifications
- Computer Science degree or equivalent work experience
- 5+ years experience as a software developer is required
- Experience with PHP development is required
- Extensive experience with AJAX/HTML/CSS is required
- Experience with cross-browser compatibility testing is required
- Experience with security implications of JavaScript/PHP software is required
- Experience with LAMP is a major plus
- Experience with testing and analyzing usability and accessibility is a major plus
- Experience with MediaWiki is a major plus
- An understanding of internationalizing and localizing software products a major plus
- Any other free/open software development experience highly welcome
- Comfortable in a highly collaborative, consensus-oriented environment
- Experience with wikis and participatory production environments is a plus
- Understanding of the free culture movement is a plus
- The ideal candidate will be creative, highly motivated, and able to operate effectively in multiple cultural and language contexts.
About the Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a US-registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible non-profit charity dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. The Wikimedia Foundation operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of the world's 10 most visited websites, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikinews and the Wikimedia Commons media repository. The organization has received numerous honors for its work, among them the Webby Award, the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica, the Japan Advertisers Association's Web Creation Award and the World Technology Award in Communications Technology.
The Wikimedia Foundation was created in 2003 to manage the operation of Wikipedia and its sister projects and is based in San Francisco, California. It currently employs 33 staff members. Wikimedia is supported by local chapter organizations in 27 countries or regions.
Apply
Please send a CV and cover letter to jobs
wikimedia.org before October 2, 2009. Please put the position title (Software Developer - Ford) in your subject line.
Applications that do not include a cover letter will not be considered. This position will be filled in October 2009.
Please copy and paste the text of your CV into the e-mail, in addition to attaching the file.
Due to the volume of applications we receive, we regret that only those selected for an interview will be contacted.
Based in San Francisco, CA.
