Lead Product Manager - Abstract Wikipedia

Position Overview

The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking a collaborative Lead Product Manager to support our work on Abstract Wikipedia. This visionary project aims to increase access to encyclopedic knowledge by enabling more people to share more knowledge in more languages. Abstract Wikipedia explores the concept of writing Wikipedia articles once in an abstract form and then translating them into any language using a community-edited natural language system. The technical foundation for this future is Wikifunctions, a multilingual, open-source catalog of code functions.

This is a unique opportunity to build the future of the Internet and radically expand access to free knowledge by turning the vision of Abstract Wikipedia into tangible impact. The role involves working with an international team across time zones UTC-4 to UTC+1.

Responsibilities

• Product Strategy & Roadmap: Develop a roadmap that balances short-term execution with long-term strategic goals.
• Stakeholder Alignment: Build alignment between stakeholders and the community to define and execute the product vision and strategy.
• Product Lifecycle Management: Own the end-to-end product lifecycle, from ideation to launch and iteration.
• Data-Informed Decisions: Utilize qualitative and quantitative methods to inform decisions, discover opportunities, and measure impact.
• Community Focus: Deeply understand community needs, releasing features iteratively to deliver value and validate hypotheses.
• Process Improvement: Establish and refine product development processes and best practices.
• Structured Thinking: Bring structured thinking to product discovery, prioritization, and decision-making.
• Prioritization: Lead the prioritization of new products and services, as well as the product backlog.
• Communication: Communicate trade-offs to drive product decisions and move the team forward. Communicate a clear product vision to internal and external audiences.

Skills and Experience

• Product Management: Minimum 7 years of product management experience in software development.
• Methodology: A structured yet flexible approach to product development, capable of adapting methodologies to fit team and organizational needs.
• Frameworks: Experience developing and refining product management frameworks, demonstrating a deep understanding of product strategy, execution, and decision-making.
• Project Execution: Past success in breaking down ambiguous projects into clear tasks, with a bias toward action.
• Communication Skills: Outstanding written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to clearly and proactively communicate plans and results to stakeholders and collaborators.
• Organizational Skills: Excellent follow-up, attention to detail, time management, and project management skills.
• Collaboration: Ability to interact effectively and develop productive working relationships with management, peers, and communities.
• Remote Work: Interest in and ability to work remotely with a distributed team across time zones.
• Adaptability: Comfort with evolving requirements and priorities in a dynamic environment.

Additionally, we’d love it if you have:

• Experience with natural language processing, computational linguistics, or knowledge management technologies.
• Experience with multilingual products or platforms, with a good understanding of internationalization and localization.
• Experience editing Wikimedia projects.

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.