[Remote] Director of Data at Wikimedia Foundation

Remote

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Not SpecifiedCompensation

Senior (5 to 8 years)Experience Level

Full TimeJob Type

UnknownVisa

BiotechnologyIndustries

Requirements

8+ years of engineering leadership with 3+ years managing managers across data-heavy backend teams (or 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
Deeply technical with strong judgment
Biased towards shipping regularly and with confidence; able to break work into safe, incremental releases with a crisp definition of done
Operationally focused: set and hold SLOs/error budgets, collaborate with stakeholders, manage vendor relationships, treat incidents as opportunities to automate and harden systems
Collaborative across functions: build strong partnerships with product management, research, analytics, and product teams
Mission driven: balance product impact with privacy and transparency, partnering with volunteers to build in the open for a global, multilingual community
A track record of open source participation

Responsibilities

Ship safely and incrementally: drive work across data engineering, search, experimentation, and data SRE in partnership with product management; align technical execution with user needs and priorities; balance velocity with reliability and involve internal Wikimedia and volunteer stakeholders
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 event-based architectures, data ingestion, modeling, freshness/accuracy SLOs, data governance, privacy by design, and cost efficiency
Partner effectively with Product Management: collaborate with the 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 allow ICs to focus on core strengths

Skills

Key technologies and capabilities for this role

Data EngineeringSearchExperimentationData SREData LakesEvent PipelinesProduction SystemsTechnical StrategyPeople ManagementHiringCollaboration

Questions & Answers

Common questions about this position

What is the location or time zone requirement for this role?

The role requires hiring only within UTC-8 to UTC+3 due to the geographical location of the team.

Is this a remote position?

The organization is described as remote-first, supporting a diverse, international team.

What are the key responsibilities of the Director of Data?

The role involves leading data engineering, search, experimentation, and data SRE teams; managing managers and principal ICs; setting roadmaps; providing technical oversight; and partnering with product management.

What technical expertise is needed for this position?

Candidates need deep technical experience with petabyte-scale data lakes, event pipelines, search and experimentation stacks, event-based architectures, data ingestion, modeling, SLOs, data governance, privacy by design, and cost efficiency.

What does the team structure look like?

The Director manages managers and principal individual contributors across Data Engineering, Search, Experimentation, and Data SRE teams.

Wikimedia Foundation

Operates Wikipedia and free knowledge projects

About Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation operates Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects, aiming to create a world where everyone can freely access and share knowledge. It provides a platform for users to read, contribute, and share content, while also supporting the volunteer communities that help maintain these projects. The foundation is funded by donations from individuals and institutions, emphasizing its nonprofit status. Unlike many other organizations, it focuses on making knowledge accessible to all without charge, advocating for policies that support free knowledge initiatives. Its goal is to empower individuals to contribute to and benefit from a collective pool of knowledge.

San Francisco, CaliforniaHeadquarters

2003Year Founded

$145.9MTotal Funding

GRANTCompany Stage

Social Impact, EducationIndustries

501-1,000Employees

Benefits

Remote Work Options

Risks

Reliance on Nvidia's AI tech may affect Wikimedia's data processing autonomy.

DSA audit could reveal vulnerabilities requiring significant resources to address.

Decentralized platforms like Mastodon may divert users from Wikipedia.

Differentiation

Wikimedia Foundation operates the world's largest free online encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

It supports a diverse range of projects like Wiktionary and Wikisource.

The Foundation is a non-profit, relying on global donations for funding.

Upsides

Nvidia's NeMo Retriever tech reduced Wikipedia processing time from 30 days to 3 days.

Holistic AI's audit under the DSA enhances Wikimedia's platform safety and accountability.

Collaboration with Open Foundation West Africa combats misinformation during Ghana's elections.

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