Tech Lead, Wikidata Platform

Wikimedia Foundation; Philadelphia (Philadelphia County); Remote; USD 129,000 - 201,000; Full time

Job summary

An innovative nonprofit organization is seeking a Technical Lead for the Wikidata Platform. This role involves guiding the development of a critical query platform that supports billions of users. You will shape the technical vision, ensuring the architecture is stable and scalable while collaborating with product and engineering teams. This position offers a unique opportunity to impact global knowledge sharing and contribute to a mission-driven organization. If you are passionate about technology and open knowledge, this role will allow you to make a meaningful difference.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in API-driven data platforms.
• 4+ years of data engineering with production deployments.
• Strong knowledge of database technologies.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and deployment of the Wikidata query platform.
• Ensure stability and scalability of the architecture.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to meet user needs.

Skills

API-driven data platform products

Data engineering

Database technologies

Java

C++

Data processing frameworks (Spark, Kafka, Flink)

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

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Summary
The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a collaborative technical lead to guide the sustainment, development, and evolution of the query platform for Wikidata, one of the world's largest open linked databases. Wikidata facilitates much of the structure of Wikipedia content and contributor activities, making an impact on billions of users across 300+ languages. It also is a critical resource for libraries, universities, and other technology platforms. Our vision is a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all human knowledge. This includes access to data for editing workflow support, research, feature development, and advancing artificial intelligence responsibly.

As the Technical Lead for Wikidata Platform, you will shape the future of how users query and access Wikidata at scale. You will guide the short- and long-term technical vision and architecture for Wikidata Platform to maintain stable, reliable and sustainable data access.

The Technical Lead shares responsibility with the Staff Product Manager and Engineering Manager for the delivery, development, and operations of Wikidata platform products and services. This role is an individual contributor role, reporting to the Director of Product, Abstract Wikipedia and Wikidata Platform. Wikidata application product strategy and development is primarily led and resourced by our affiliate organization, Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE), so this role will also work closely with WMDE product management and engineering counterparts.

The Technical Lead will join the Product and Technology organization at Wikimedia, working alongside product teams building and operating features, products, platforms, and services used by hundreds of millions of people around the world. This is an opportunity to do good while improving and increasing the impact of the Wikidata platform for one of the top 15 websites in the world.

In this role, you will lead the design, development, and deployment of Wikidata's query platform architecture. You will collaborate with the Staff Product Manager to ship platform services and features to serve technical contributors and users of Wikidata, deliver on user needs, and guide Wikidata query services to meet growth in data and demand.

Our engineering environment includes open source applications developed in-house and off-the-shelf, with a wide variety of technologies and stack components, hosted primarily in colocated data centers. A highly successful candidate will also serve as a thought partner to the Vice President and Director of Product, and to affiliate partners on strategic and tactical roadmap development.

This is a remote position; open to candidates residing in a range of different locations in the world. Some travel required.

You are responsible for:

• Stability, performance, and scalability of the Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) architecture and data pipeline
• Articulating a vision for Wikidata Platform's query infrastructure that supports continued growth and future sustainability
• Developing new query methods, APIs, algorithms, and indexing strategies to optimize graph search capabilities for priority use cases
• Collaborating with the Staff Product Manager, Engineering Manager, and other cross-functional colleagues to design system requirements and ship iterative improvements to meet user needs
• Maintaining an understanding of current developments in structured knowledge representation technologies in order to propose innovative solutions
• Persevering through setbacks to ensure team goals are met, or communicating when a pivot may be necessary
• Developing an understanding of our movement and how it drives our work
• Developing best practices for interacting with platform query services
• Performing data analysis to uncover insights and patterns

Skills and Experience:

• 8+ years of experience building and scaling API-driven data platform products with technical userbases
• 4+ years of experience in data engineering, specifically with production deployments at scale
• Deep understanding of database and knowledge graph representation technologies and standards
• Proficiency in Java, C++, or other programming languages for database interactions. Ability to set up, scale, and investigate systems is more important than expertise in a particular language.
• Experience navigating issues associated with privacy-sensitive data and familiarity with security best practices in implementing database query services
• Past success in breaking down ambiguous projects into clear tasks
• Ability to work with multiple stakeholder teams to deliver results through lateral influence and collaboration
• Knowledge of highly scalable data processing frameworks (Spark, Kafka, Flink, etc.)

Qualities that are important to us:

• Commitment to the mission of the organization, our values, and guiding principles
• Strong collaborative problem-solving skills and ability to lead a technical team effectively to deliver a project from idea to production
• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills, with an ability to clearly and proactively communicate plans and results to stakeholders and collaborators.
• Ability to navigate and make decisions in circumstances with limited, incomplete, and conflicting information
• Ability to generate simple and elegant solutions in a complex environment where resources are limited and our guiding principles are ambitious
• Curiosity and commitment to continuous learning
• Ability to grow impact through mentoring and development of other engineers
• Resilience and patience in a large and complex ecosystem of stakeholders
• Emotional intelligence, kindness, and the ability to listen, understand, and respond to multiple perspectives.

Additionally, we'd love it if you have:

• Familiarity with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and CI/CD pipelines
• Experience with open source, open data, or open knowledge communities
• Experience as a contributor on Wikipedia, Wikidata, or in Wikimedia project communities
• Experience delivering data platform capabilities that you can share with us during interviews

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 in 40+ countries. Salaries are competitive, equitable, and aligned with our values and culture. The anticipated annual pay range for US-based applicants is US$129,347 to US$200,824, depending on various factors including location. For international applicants, the pay range will be adjusted accordingly. We do not consider salary history in our offers. The actual salary will be based on skills, experience, and location.