The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and our other free knowledge projects. We want to make it easier for everyone to share what they know. To do this, we keep Wikipedia and Wikimedia sites fast, reliable, and available to all. We protect the values and policies that allow free knowledge to thrive. We build new features and tools...

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Engineering Manager, Wikidata Platform

Job Type

Remote

Qualification

BA/BSc/HND

Experience

5 years

Location

Nairobi

Job Field

ICT / Computer

What You’ll Do

Team & Delivery Leadership

• Addresses issues of diverse scope where analysis of situation or data requires evaluation of a variety of factors, including an understanding of Foundation priorities & current business trends
• Lead timely, high-quality engineering delivery for WDQS and related query platform services, including large-scale platform or data migrations involving multiple teams and stakeholders
• Ensure reliability, performance, and sustainability of existing and future query infrastructure
• Oversee planning activities including estimation, resource allocation, and work break-down, and balance roadmap work with maintenance needs
• Triage incoming issues, bugs, and operational incidents

Technical & Platform Strategy

• Develop and drive long-term engineering strategy for WDQS, including lifecycle management, architectural tradeoffs, and future planning
• Partner with SRE and other Foundation teams to ensure operational excellence and alignment across the data ecosystem
• Safeguard privacy, security, and data integrity across query services
• Provide technical input on system design, complexity, estimates, and feasibility

People Management

• Hire, onboard, mentor, and support the professional growth and performance of engineers on the Wikidata Platform team
• Foster a collaborative, inclusive, and psychologically safe culture
• Ensure healthy team processes and rituals, time management, and sustainable on-call practices

Cross-Functional & Affiliate Collaboration

• Partner closely with the Product and Tech Leads to define roadmaps, priorities, work scopes, and deliver impactful outcomes
• Proactive dependency management—staying on top of the teams we depend on and the teams that depend on us
• Maintain strong, productive collaboration with Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE) product and engineering counterparts
• Communicate technical plans, risks, and progress clearly to internal teams, leadership, and external stakeholders

Skills and Experience We’re Looking For

• 5+ years of engineering management experience leading teams building API-driven or platform-level data services
• Experience collaborating closely with product and tech leads on software development teams that ship products with community input
• Experience building and operating large-scale, high-throughput products, with strong foundations in observability, incident response, runbook quality, and overall operational excellence
• Experience guiding software systems through their full lifecycle
• Strong people management skills including hiring, coaching, and performance management
• Experience working with data streams and data-intensive applications
• Experience navigating challenges related to privacy-sensitive data

• Addresses issues of diverse scope where analysis of situation or data requires evaluation of a variety of factors, including an understanding of Foundation priorities & current business trends
• Lead timely, high-quality engineering delivery for WDQS and related query platform services, including large-scale platform or data migrations involving multiple teams and stakeholders
• Ensure reliability, performance, and sustainability of existing and future query infrastructure
• Oversee planning activities including estimation, resource allocation, and work break-down, and balance roadmap work with maintenance needs
• Triage incoming issues, bugs, and operational incidents
• Develop and drive long-term engineering strategy for WDQS, including lifecycle management, architectural tradeoffs, and future planning
• Partner with SRE and other Foundation teams to ensure operational excellence and alignment across the data ecosystem
• Safeguard privacy, security, and data integrity across query services
• Provide technical input on system design, complexity, estimates, and feasibility
• Hire, onboard, mentor, and support the professional growth and performance of engineers on the Wikidata Platform team
• Foster a collaborative, inclusive, and psychologically safe culture
• Ensure healthy team processes and rituals, time management, and sustainable on-call practices
• Partner closely with the Product and Tech Leads to define roadmaps, priorities, work scopes, and deliver impactful outcomes
• Proactive dependency management—staying on top of the teams we depend on and the teams that depend on us
• Maintain strong, productive collaboration with Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE) product and engineering counterparts
• Communicate technical plans, risks, and progress clearly to internal teams, leadership, and external stakeholders

• 5+ years of engineering management experience leading teams building API-driven or platform-level data services
• Experience collaborating closely with product and tech leads on software development teams that ship products with community input
• Experience building and operating large-scale, high-throughput products, with strong foundations in observability, incident response, runbook quality, and overall operational excellence
• Experience guiding software systems through their full lifecycle
• Strong people management skills including hiring, coaching, and performance management
• Experience working with data streams and data-intensive applications
• Experience navigating challenges related to privacy-sensitive data

• BA/BSc/HND