Staff Engineer Wikidata (all genders)

Free knowledge leads to a fairer world. Wikipedia is the most important online knowledge collection of our time. The German Wikipedia alone records almost 1 billion page views per month for a total of 3 million articles. We - Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. - support the volunteers of Wikipedia and its sister projects, develop free software, such as Wikidata, and advocate for free access to knowledge, the opening of education and research, and more common good orientation in data policy.

For our Software Engineering team, based in Berlin, we are looking for a permanent Staff Engineer Wikidata (all genders), full-time or part-time (30-40 hours / week), ideally starting 01.07.2025 or sooner.

About the position & the team:

You will be working in a key leadership position with one of the teams that develops and improves the open source software behind the Wikidata project. You’ll be working alongside the Product Managers and reporting to the Engineering Manager, driving the technical direction of Wikidata with an eye on modernization and reducing technical debt. You will also assist in the professional growth and development of the technical skills of the wikidata developers.

Knowledge and experience in the technologies we use is not a requirement. We believe they all can be learned on the job and Wikimedia Deutschland e.V., your team, and your line manager will support you in this learning. We list only a few of them here. 

Most of our server side code is written in PHP and for version control we use Git. We use Vue.js and TypeScript for our modern frontends. We also keep migrating our legacy code into these and newer technologies. Also, testing is important to us; we use testing frameworks and practice continuous integration across our projects.

What you’ll be doing:

• Contribute code to an open source project with a daily average of 25k active users making an average of 600k daily contributions.
• Set technical direction for the team to achieve the goals of the owned products. Empower the team to follow, adjust and change this direction.
• Along with the Engineering Manager, own the technical backlog of Wikidata.
• Collaborate with technical leaders and engineering managers of other teams to ensure the technical direction of the team is aligned with the broader goals of products and the organisation.
• Align the team to have a common understanding of best practices in software development.
• Provide expertise and engineering perspective to support other roles with planning and in making product- or team-related decisions.
• Plan and facilitate needed modernization and technological advancement and ensure that the used technology continuously supports the products as it evolves.
• Support the professional growth of individuals on the team by taking a leading role in the development of technical skills. Assist the engineering managers in the overall growth of the team.

What makes you right for this role:

• You are passionate and care about software. 
• You have an eye for software design and quality and you understand the importance of tests.
• You can recognize legacy code and know how to effectively deal with it.
• You like to participate in technical discussions and are open to new ideas.
• You are a fan of innovation and like to promote innovative approaches within the team.
• You like being in a team working towards a common goal, learning together, and supporting and lifting up your peers.
• You are not afraid of making mistakes, you want to keep learning and developing yourself.
• You are able to communicate in English with professional proficiency, German skills are a plus.

Interested?

Send us your detailed application documents (Resume & Motivational Letter (yes, we read them)) via our job portal. We kindly ask you to refrain from application photos and information on date of birth, marital status and parents. 

Our Recruiting team will be happy to answer your questions. Please contact us via jobs@wikimedia.de 

Wikimedia Germany is committed to equal opportunities and does not discriminate on the basis of, for example, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion or belief, political or other convictions, gender, age, disability, or sexual identity or orientation. We would like to adress you in the way which feels most comfortable for you so please share your preferred name and pronouns if you wish.