Senior Software Engineer, Android (Contract)

Wikimedia Foundation; Michigan; Remote; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking a Senior Software Engineer, Android to empower the App Experience and App Growth teams within Core Experiences. This fully remote role requires a daily overlap of at least four hours between 15:00 UTC and 21:00 UTC to support global communication.

You will lead Android features, optimize performance, and collaborate with product managers, designers, and native app engineers to deliver accessible, scalable experiences for Wikipedia's multilingual audience.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or higher with significant Android experience.
• 5-10+ years of professional Android development experience.
• Proficiency with Kotlin, XML, Jetpack Compose, and Android architectural patterns.
• Experience optimizing Android performance and responsive UIs.
• Experience adding webview-wrapped experiences to native apps.

Responsibilities

• Identify risks early and aid pragmatic tradeoffs across quality, velocity, maintainability, and user impact.
• Lead design for medium-sized Android projects and build scalable components for a global audience.
• Write testable, observable code and instrument features for analysis by product analysts.
• Collaborate with product managers, designers, and other engineers to balance user needs and constraints.
• Prioritize high-impact opportunities and clarify sequencing with the team.
• Align work with Wikimedia Foundation mission and values.

Skills

Android development

Kotlin

XML

Jetpack Compose

Architecture patterns

Performance optimization

Webview integration

Cross-platform mobile

Mobile games

Data science / ML

MediaWiki familiarity

Agentic coding

Education

CS/STEM degree

Tools

MediaWiki

Drupal

WordPress

Job description

The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a Senior Software Engineer, Android to support the App Experience and App Growth teams within the Core Experiences engineering group. Our teams have a clear and ambitious goal: make our apps the destination for knowledge lovers and grow our active readership.

It’s important to state that we are a fully remote team at a global organisation. To ensure there are enough opportunities to communicate, this role needs at least four hours of your workday to occur between 15:00 UTC and 21:00 UTC.

Responsibilities

• Identifies risks early, and helps the team make pragmatic tradeoffs across quality, velocity, maintainability, and user impact.
• Implementation - Improving the mobile Wikipedia product experiences that serve a global, multilingual audience on Android. Leads system design for medium-sized projects and can design and build accessible, adaptable, scalable components.
• Quality, testing and observability - Consistently builds software that is easy to test, observe and debug. Instruments features that enable deeper analysis by Product Analysts.
• Cross-functional collaboration - Partners with product managers, designers, analysts, and native app engineers to shape pragmatic solutions that balance user needs, technical constraints, platform expectations, and delivery timelines.
• Prioritisation - Proactively identifies high-impact technical opportunities and risks across the engagement timeframe, works with the team to clarify priorities and sequencing.
• Commitment to the Foundation's Mission and Values

Qualities that are important to us:

• Helps others resolve misunderstandings productively.
• Builds strong relationships - Proactively brings the right people into discussions, identifies process improvements.
• Knowledge sharing - Strong knowledge-sharing practices, documents work for handover and consistently helps others understand and apply shared knowledge.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's and 5-10+ years related professional experience with significant experience building Android applications
• Strong professional experience and proficiency with Kotlin, XML, Jetpack Compose, and familiarity with architectural patterns in Android
• Experience of Android performance optimisation techniques to ensure smooth, responsive, and high-performing applications under a variety of conditions.
• Experience adding webview-wrapped experiences to existing native mobile apps (iOS or Android)
• Experience in maintaining cross-platform mobile applications.
• Experience building mobile games or other interactive mobile experiences.
• Experience with data science, machine learning, and/or AI (e.g., Familiarity with Wikipedia / wikitext / markdown editing or content management systems (e.g., MediaWiki, Drupal, WordPress)
• Experience with leveraging agentic coding to scale the work of small engineering teams.
• Bachelor's, master's, or doctorate degree in computer science, management information systems, or STEM field (or equivalent certification)
• Prior experience with MediaWiki or Wikimedia projects.

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. 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 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 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. Please note that we are currently able to hire in the following:

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.

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 Privacy Policy

Wikimedia Foundation

What does the Wikimedia Foundation do?

What makes Wikipedia different from social media platforms?

Our Projects

News from across the Wikimedia movement

Wikimedia Blog