Interim Senior UX Designer/Researcher for Technical Wishes Team (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 an Interim UX Designer & Researcher for Technical Wishes (all genders), part-time (25 hours / week), ideally starting 01.08.2026 for a fixed-term contract until 31.12.2026.

This position is designed as a hybrid working model with regular presence in our Berlin office.

About the position & the team:

Technical Wishes / Technische Wünsche is a joint project of the German-speaking wiki communities and the Software Development Department at Wikimedia Deutschland. Our goals are to make it easier to contribute by improving MediaWiki, the software which powers the Wikimedia wikis, and to do this in a collaborative, community-centered way. 

This role will focus on doing user research in a worldwide community, further developing our research operations standards and developing user interface improvements for millions of users across Wikipedia and its sister projects. 

The role will report to the Head of UX Design & Research and is part of the UX Design & Research team.  

What you’ll be doing:

• You are responsible for planning UX research activities in the Technical Wishes and adjacent teams, aligning your research plans with the product strategy, all in close collaboration and with support from your teams.
• You will perform user research to understand user behaviors, pain points, needs, and aspirations in our community, and deliver actionable insights through stories, customer journey maps, scenarios, and flows. 
• You will center the community of users and editors in your work, finding frequent opportunities to include them with participatory methods throughout the product development cycle.
• You will further develop research operations for your team, e.g. establish continuous research and work on standardization of research and design processes for your team
• You will distill complex concepts into easy-to-understand designs and prototypes, and validate them through design reviews and usability testing.
• You will follow system guidelines to create high-fidelity UI designs and handover specifications for developers.

What makes you right for this role:

• You have experience with qualitative research methods, such as planning and conducting usability tests, interviews, surveys, desk research, and conducting workshops.
• You have experience in defining use cases and workflows. You are able to design interactions and interfaces that are usable and useful for all users, regardless of their background or abilities, and follow industry best practices.
• You have experience in setting up research operations and defining standards. 
• You have experience with or interest in participatory and co-design practices.
• You have experience working in a cross-functional team with e.g., product managers, UX designers, community communication managers, and engineers, in an agile environment.
• You are comfortable using verbal, written and visual communication skills to share your research and design work to relevant stakeholders inside and outside the project.
• You can communicate in English on a professional level, you feel confident to conduct research in English and German.

Interested?

Please 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.

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. We would like to address you in the way which feels most comfortable for you so please share your preferred name and pronouns if you wish.