Remote Backend Engineer, Wikidata Platform

your Jared; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 95,000 - 149,000; Full time

Job summary

The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking a Software Engineer to join the Wikidata Platform backend and operations team. You’ll help scale the Wikidata Query Service and related platform services used across Wikimedia projects and research worldwide.

This remote role requires overlapping hours with UTC+1 to UTC-5 (14:00–17:00 UTC) to coordinate with a global team, with production-grade systems, observability, and CI/CD as core responsibilities.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of experience as a backend or platform engineer working on distributed systems or data platforms.
• Solid understanding of database and/or knowledge graph representation technologies.
• Java/C++ proficiency; ability to set up, scale, and investigate systems is valued over language specifics.
• Experience building and operating production-grade services with SLOs and non-functional considerations.
• Familiarity with modern observability tools (metrics, logging, tracing).
• Familiarity with data processing technologies such as graph databases, search indexes, or data pipelines.
• Ability to work across disciplines and communicate clearly with technical and non-technical audiences.
• Commitment to continuous learning and mission-driven engineering culture.

Responsibilities

• Help design, build, and maintain backend systems and APIs powering Wikidata’s query infrastructure.
• Improve reliability, observability, and automation of the Wikidata Query Service and data pipelines.
• Integrate Wikidata Platform services with other Wikimedia systems and data sources.
• Develop features to ensure stability and scalability with growing usage.
• Monitor production systems, respond to incidents, and resolve bottlenecks.
• Support platform migrations and system upgrades (triple stores, streaming ingestion).
• Contribute to deployment automation, CI/CD workflows, and service instrumentation.
• Participate in code reviews and design discussions, and share knowledge with Wikimedia’s technical community.

Skills

Backend experience

Graph databases

Java/C++ proficiency

SLOs and reliability

Observability tools

Data processing pipelines

Cross-functional collaboration

Continuous learning

Open source / knowledge communities

Wikimedia tech knowledge

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking a Software Engineer to join the Wikidata Platform backend and operations team. You’ll help scale the Wikidata Query Service and related platform services used across Wikimedia projects and research worldwide.

This remote role requires overlapping hours with UTC+1 to UTC-5 (14:00–17:00 UTC) to coordinate with a global team, with production-grade systems, observability, and CI/CD as core responsibilities.