Engineering Manager, Security and Privacy

Engineering Manager, Product Safety and Security

Position Overview

The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking an experienced and mission-driven Engineering Manager to lead the security and privacy engineering group within the Product Safety and Security team. This role will also advise the Foundation on crucial security and privacy matters.

The Product Safety and Security team comprises two closely integrated engineering groups. This position will manage a team of security and privacy engineers dedicated to enhancing the security and privacy of applications powering Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. The role involves close collaboration with a peer engineering group focused on platform integrity and the safety of contributors. Both groups report to the Director of Engineering, MediaWiki.

This is a leadership position that will partner with the Group Product Manager for Safety and Security to define and implement the Product Safety and Security team’s roadmap and priorities.

Why This Role Matters

The Wikimedia Foundation operates Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. We are deeply committed to the security, privacy, and integrity of these projects and the volunteer community that sustains them. The Product Safety and Security team plays a pivotal role in guiding how the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects adapt to an increasingly complex threat landscape.

Responsibilities

• Lead a group of security and privacy engineers in protecting the Wikimedia Foundation’s people, project integrity, infrastructure, and other assets against threats.
• Advise product management across the Foundation on security best practices and the security implications of various product decisions.
• Contribute to establishing the Wikimedia Foundation’s overall security and safety roadmap, ensuring delivery against technical and organizational goals.
• Collaborate effectively with Product & Engineering teams, Legal, ITS, and other departments.
• Set direction, remove obstacles, and ensure delivery against technical and organizational goals.
• Establish and lead the execution of group processes, including sprint planning, security releases and deployments, and security incident response.
• Hire and develop a high-performing, inclusive engineering group that builds and owns security-critical software, operating from a shared sense of mission.

Skills and Experience

• Experience managing engineers and engineering teams responsible for infrastructure, platform, or developer-facing tools.
• Strong technical background with experience in systems engineering, cloud infrastructure (e.g., Kubernetes, OpenStack), and developer platform architecture.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional collaboration and product-oriented development in open communities or large-scale developer ecosystems.
• Excellent communication and facilitation skills, particularly in distributed and asynchronous environments.
• Ability to travel 2-3 times a year.

Additionally, we’d love it if you have:

• Experience managing engineering teams with a focus on security.
• Experience contributing to or leading in open-source projects.
• Familiarity with Wikipedia or Wikimedia projects.
• A passion for building inclusive platforms that lower barriers to entry and empower a diverse set of contributors.

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.

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