Want to get hired at Wikimedia Foundation?

Director of Data

Wikimedia Foundation

HybridHybrid

Original Job Summary

About the Role

The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit behind Wikipedia and sister projects, is seeking a deeply technical, outcome-oriented Director of Data. In this role, you will lead data engineering, search, experimentation, and data-related site reliability engineering (SRE) initiatives while keeping a high technical standard for designing, building, operating, and evolving our data products in the open.

Responsibilities

  • Ship reliable, privacy-respecting data products and platforms.
  • Manage managers and principal ICs across multiple teams.
  • Set clear roadmaps and ensure production-readiness.
  • Provide strategic technical oversight and solve complex technical challenges.
  • Foster collaboration between technical teams and product management.

What We Expect

  • 8+ years of engineering leadership with 3+ years managing managers.
  • Experience shipping production data systems at internet scale.
  • Deep familiarity with open source tech stacks (Kubernetes, Kafka, Spark, Flink, Hadoop, Ceph, Airflow).
  • Ability to lead globally distributed teams in a remote-first environment.

Additional Desirable Qualifications

  • Open source community participation.
  • Familiarity with multiple languages.
  • Experience in volunteer community involvement.

About Wikimedia Foundation

Wikimedia Foundation operates Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects. With a mission for global knowledge sharing, we support a diverse, international team and a worldwide volunteer community. The organization is non-profit and focuses on transparency, privacy, and open collaboration.

Key skills/competency

  • Data Engineering
  • Search
  • Experimentation
  • Site Reliability Engineering
  • Technical Leadership
  • Production Systems
  • Event Pipelines
  • Open Source
  • Cloud Technologies
  • Team Management

How to Get Hired at Wikimedia Foundation

🎯 Tips for Getting Hired

  • Research Wikimedia Foundation's culture: Review mission, values and global impact.
  • Customize your resume: Emphasize leadership in data engineering.
  • Show tangible results: Highlight production systems experience.
  • Prepare technical details: Review open source tech stacks and architectures.
  • Practice scenario questions: Focus on team management and strategic oversight.

📝 Interview Preparation Advice

Technical Preparation

Review Kubernetes and Kafka fundamentals.
Study data ingestion and pipeline architectures.
Familiarize with event-based system design.
Practice system scalability and SLO-setting.

Behavioral Questions

Describe a challenge in managing remote teams.
Explain balancing speed with production reliability.
Share an experience improving cross-functional collaboration.
Discuss decision-making in technical strategy.