Lead Program Manager, Community Wishlist

Wikimedia Foundation; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 130,000 - 198,000; Full time

Job summary

Wikimedia Foundation is seeking a Lead Program Manager to oversee the Community Wishlist portfolio, coordinating across teams and stakeholder groups to translate community requests into measurable impact. You will manage planning, execution, and evaluation, ensuring clear metrics, risk resolution, and transparent reporting in a remote, distributed environment.

The role requires extensive experience in community programs, multi-stakeholder leadership, and strong communication skills, with a focus

Qualifications

• 8+ years experience in community management and portfolio leadership.
• 8+ years experience managing multi-stakeholder groups with staff, partner organizations, and volunteers.
• Proven track record delivering complex programs and balancing competing priorities.
• Strong program management skills: prioritization, planning, time management, facilitation, problem solving, and decision-making.
• Excellent English written and verbal communication skills and executive presentation experience.
• Ability to build rapport and influence with distributed teams across cultures.
• Commitment to equity, inclusion, and diversity.
• Ability to engage with complexity and move from ambiguity to action.
• Ability to communicate and collaborate with both deeply technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Detail oriented with big-picture awareness.

Responsibilities

• Lead all aspects of planning, coordination, and execution of intake programs across teams and departments.
• Track, support, and enable teams to deliver meaningful impact; establish clear metrics and milestones.
• Facilitate and improve team practices, workflows, and processes at a wishlist program level.
• Support community organizations to implement related programming to expand reach with target audiences.
• Manage budgets and resources for intake activities, including contracting and managing external vendors and consultants.
• Manage teams across functional boundaries, both internal and external.
• Maintain strong documentation and transparent reporting structures, ensuring visibility across all stakeholders.
• Communicate overall vision and direction of the portfolio to various stakeholder audiences.
• Lead capacity planning exercises and align priorities with strategic objectives.
• Partner with Product and Technology leadership and program stakeholders to align priorities.

Skills

Program management

Stakeholder mgmt

Communication

Executive communication

Relationship building

Job description

Lead Program Manager, Community Wishlist

Remote

LEAD PROGRAM MANAGER, COMMUNITY WISHLIST

About the Role

We are looking for a Lead Program Manager to join our team and manage our Community Wishlist program portfolio. This role reports to the Chief of Staff to the Chief Product and Technology Officer. As the Lead Program Manager, you will lead the strategic alignment, design, delivery, and evaluation of critical WMF programs related to clarifying, communicating, and fulfilling features and fixes requested by the Wikimedia community. You will work across multiple teams, departments, and Wikimedia stakeholder groups to drive critical cross-functional and cross-departmental programs, turn community requests into overall impact, and guide teams toward impactful outcomes.

The Lead Program Manager will oversee all aspects of the programs in their portfolio, including achieving alignment, tracking and resolving cross-functional dependencies, and resolving risks and blockers. They should deliver complex programs with clarity, efficiency, and measurable results. We are looking for someone with a proven ability to build strong relationships, align diverse stakeholders, have difficult conversations, and get folks to shared objectives. The role requires comfort navigating ambiguity independently.

This is a remote position working with internationally distributed teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead all aspects of planning, coordination, and execution of request intake programs across teams and departments.
• Track, support, and enable teams to deliver meaningful impact; establish clear metrics and/or milestones to measure success.
• Facilitate and improve - at a wishlist program level - the team practices, workflows, and processes.
• Support community organizations to implement related programming to expand reach with target audiences.
• Manage budgets and resources for intake activities, including contracting and managing external vendors and consultants as required.
• Manage teams across functional boundaries, both internal and external
• Maintain strong documentation and transparent reporting structures, ensuring visibility across all stakeholders.
• Communicate overall vision and direction of the portfolio to various stakeholder audiences.

Strategic Planning & Capacity Management

• Lead capacity planning exercises, identify gaps and make recommendations for resource allocation or escalation as needed.
• Partner with Product and Technology leadership and program stakeholders to align priorities with strategic objectives and operational realities.

Stakeholder and Community Management

• Build and maintain relationships with community members, community leaders, movement organizations, and other diverse stakeholders
• Identify relevant stakeholders, develop a shared understanding of program goals among them, keep them aligned, and ensure they understand their commitments to program goals and other stakeholders

Program Evaluation & Reporting

• Design program evaluation plans
• Develop and report upon relevant qualitative and quantitative project metrics
• Evaluate success against metrics and milestones, and ensure clear communication of that in reporting.
• Prepare reports and presentations to communicate program outcomes and progress toward strategic goals, to both internal and external stakeholders

Qualifications

• 8+ years experience in community management and community service ownership, including a portfolio of past projects led
• 8+ years experience managing multi-stakeholder groups with staff, partner organizations, and volunteers
• Proven track record of having positive impact on large teams and complex projects, effectively balancing competing priorities, and delivering results
• Strong program management skills: prioritization, organization, planning, time management, facilitation, problem solving, and decision-making
• Excellent English written and verbal communication skills and executive presentation experience
• Ability to build rapport and influence with distributed teams representing various cultures, featuring different communication and learning styles
• A commitment to and experience in creating a culture of equity, inclusion, and diversity
• Ability to engage with a large amount of complexity and move from ambiguity to action
• Ability to communicate and collaborate with both deeply technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Detail oriented with an ability to keep big picture in mind

Additionally, we’d love it if you have:

• Experience working in an international organization that has a distributed workforce
• Experience working with the Wikimedia community or within a movement with strong culture and values

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$ 130,198 to US$ 198,422 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:

US States: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming (*US Territory or Federal District)

Countries: Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Germany, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Our non-US employees are hired through a local third party Employer of Record (EOR) and must have current work authorization in their location. (*citizens/permanent residents only)

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 [e-mail] or [phone].