New

Director of Data

Remote

The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that hosts Wikipedia and its sister projects, is seeking a deeply technical, outcome-oriented Director of Data to lead our work across data engineering, search, experimentation, and data-related site reliability engineering (SRE).

Wikipedia is a top-ten website that serves audiences in over 300 languages and reaches over a billion people each month. Our data systems power everything from product analytics and machine learning to product features, community tools, and public datasets used by researchers worldwide. In this role, you’ll be accountable for shipping reliable, privacy-respecting data products and platforms and for maintaining a high technical bar of how we design, build, operate, and evolve them in the open.

You’ll manage managers and principal ICs across multiple teams (Data Engineering, Search, Experimentation, and Data SRE). You’ll set clear, realistic roadmaps; focus on production-readiness; and provide strategic technical oversight while being comfortable unpacking and researching deep technical problems and solutions. You have enough experience to know what “good” looks like for petabyte-scale data lakes, event pipelines, and search and experimentation stacks, and scale the best practices for how we plan, build, and operate production systems.

Please note: We will only consider hiring within UTC-8 to UTC+3 due to the geographical location of the team.

We’d like you to:

  • Ship safely and incrementally. Drive the work across data engineering, search, experimentation, and data SRE in close partnership with product management to align technical execution with user needs and priorities. Balance velocity with reliability, involving stakeholders both inside Wikimedia and the larger volunteer community. 
  • Develop people and teams. Manage managers, coach senior ICs, scale hiring for a diverse, international, remote-first organization, and foster a collaborative, mission-aligned culture.
  • Provide technical strategy and oversight. Set architectural direction grounded in experience with event-based architectures, data ingestion, modeling, freshness/accuracy SLOs, data governance, privacy by design principles, and cost efficiency.
  • Partner effectively with Product Management. Collaborate with our Group Product Manager for Data Platform and senior PMs to balance technical implementation with diverse user needs. Navigate priority trade-offs through healthy debate and shared accountability.
  • Be an operational multiplier. Identify and share patterns across teams that reduce toil and let ICs focus on what they do best.

You are:

  • Deeply technical with strong judgment. You can read design docs and PRs, spot missing edge cases or constraints, and make calls grounded in industry best practice.
  • Biased towards shipping regularly and with confidence. You break work into safe, incremental releases with a crisp definition of done, unblock teams quickly, and measure outcomes.
  • Operationally focused. You set and hold SLOs/error budgets, collaborate with stakeholders, manage vendor relationships, and treat incidents as opportunities to automate and harden systems.
  • Collaborative across functions. You build strong partnerships with product management, research, analytics, and product teams to achieve shared outcomes.
  • Mission driven. You balance product impact with privacy and transparency, partnering with volunteers to build in the open for a global, multilingual community.

Skills and Experience:

  • 8+ years of engineering leadership with 3+ years managing managers across data-heavy backend teams (or an equivalent track record of shipping production data systems at internet scale).
  • Track record of shipping production data systems at massive scale.
  • Hands-on experience with relevant open source tech stacks (e.g. Kubernetes, Kafka, Spark, Flink, Hadoop, Ceph, Airflow).
  • Ability to hire, coach, and lead globally distributed teams.

Additionally, we’d love it if you have:

  • A track record of open source participation.
  • Fluency or familiarity with languages in addition to English.
  • Experience as a member of a volunteer community.

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 40+ countries*. Salaries at the Wikimedia Foundation are set in a way that is competitive, equitable, and consistent with our values and culture. The anticipated annual pay range of this position for applicants based within the United States is $179,376 to $279,262 with multiple individualized factors, including cost of living in the location, being the determinants of the offered pay. For applicants located outside of the US, the pay range will be adjusted to the country of hire. We neither ask for nor take into consideration the salary history of applicants. The compensation for a successful applicant will be based on their skills, experience and location. 

*Please note that we are currently able to hire in the following countries: Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Peru, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States of America and Uruguay.  Our non-US employees are hired through a local third party Employer of Record (EOR). 

We periodically review this list to streamline to ensure alignment with our hiring requirements. 

All applicants can reach out to their recruiter to understand more about the specific pay range for their location during the interview process.

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 recruiting@wikimedia.org or +1 (415) 839-6885.

More information

U.S. Benefits & Perks

Applicant Privacy Policy

Wikimedia Foundation

What does the Wikimedia Foundation do?

What makes Wikipedia different from social media platforms?

Our Projects

Our Tech Stack

News from across the Wikimedia movement

Wikimedia Blog

Wikimedia 2030

 

Create a Job Alert

Interested in building your career at Wikimedia Foundation? Get future opportunities sent straight to your email.

Apply for this job

*

indicates a required field

Phone
Resume/CV*

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Cover Letter

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf


Select...
Select...

If yes, please list:

Select...
Select...
Select...
Select...
Select...
Select...
Select...
Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Wikimedia Foundation’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Select...
Select...
Race & Ethnicity Definitions

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection. As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measure the effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categories is as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.

Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability

Form CC-305
Page 1 of 1
OMB Control Number 1250-0005
Expires 04/30/2026

Why are you being asked to complete this form?

We are a federal contractor or subcontractor. The law requires us to provide equal employment opportunity to qualified people with disabilities. We have a goal of having at least 7% of our workers as people with disabilities. The law says we must measure our progress towards this goal. To do this, we must ask applicants and employees if they have a disability or have ever had one. People can become disabled, so we need to ask this question at least every five years.

Completing this form is voluntary, and we hope that you will choose to do so. Your answer is confidential. No one who makes hiring decisions will see it. Your decision to complete the form and your answer will not harm you in any way. If you want to learn more about the law or this form, visit the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) website at www.dol.gov/ofccp.

How do you know if you have a disability?

A disability is a condition that substantially limits one or more of your “major life activities.” If you have or have ever had such a condition, you are a person with a disability. Disabilities include, but are not limited to:

  • Alcohol or other substance use disorder (not currently using drugs illegally)
  • Autoimmune disorder, for example, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS
  • Blind or low vision
  • Cancer (past or present)
  • Cardiovascular or heart disease
  • Celiac disease
  • Cerebral palsy
  • Deaf or serious difficulty hearing
  • Diabetes
  • Disfigurement, for example, disfigurement caused by burns, wounds, accidents, or congenital disorders
  • Epilepsy or other seizure disorder
  • Gastrointestinal disorders, for example, Crohn's Disease, irritable bowel syndrome
  • Intellectual or developmental disability
  • Mental health conditions, for example, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD
  • Missing limbs or partially missing limbs
  • Mobility impairment, benefiting from the use of a wheelchair, scooter, walker, leg brace(s) and/or other supports
  • Nervous system condition, for example, migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS)
  • Neurodivergence, for example, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, other learning disabilities
  • Partial or complete paralysis (any cause)
  • Pulmonary or respiratory conditions, for example, tuberculosis, asthma, emphysema
  • Short stature (dwarfism)
  • Traumatic brain injury
Select...

PUBLIC BURDEN STATEMENT: According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless such collection displays a valid OMB control number. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete.