Lead Product Manager - Abstract Wikipedia

Summary: The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking a collaborative Lead Product Manager to support the Abstract Wikipedia project. This initiative aims to enhance access to encyclopedic knowledge by enabling more people to share knowledge in more languages. Abstract Wikipedia envisions a future where Wikipedia articles are written once in an abstract form and then translated into any language through a community-edited natural language system. The technical foundation for this is Wikifunctions, a multilingual, open-source catalog of code functions.

This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of the internet and expand access to free knowledge. The role involves working with an international team across time zones UTC-4 to UTC+1.

Responsibilities:

• Strategic Planning: Develop a roadmap balancing short-term execution with long-term strategic goals.
• Vision & Alignment: Build stakeholder and community alignment 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 and release features iteratively to deliver value and validate hypotheses.
• Process Improvement: Establish and refine product development processes and best practices.
• Prioritization: Bring structured thinking to product discovery, prioritization, and decision-making, leading the prioritization of new products, services, and the product backlog.
• Communication: Communicate trade-offs to drive product decisions and move the team forward. Clearly communicate the 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, adaptable to 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: Proven success in breaking down ambiguous projects into clear tasks with a bias toward action.
• Communication: Outstanding written and verbal communication skills for clear and proactive communication of 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 build 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, and 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.