Job Description
Join the Wikimedia Foundation's Editing Team to improve the tools that support millions of volunteer contributors to Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects. This remote role focuses on enhancing user experiences and maintaining an industry-leading rich-text editing platform.
Key Information
- Location Model: Remote
- Location Details: Must be within UTC-5 to UTC+2 time zones.
- Salary Range: US$88,975 to US$139,056 (for US-based applicants; adjusted for other locations)
- Years Experience Min: 2+ years
- Employment Type: Permanent
- Company Industry: Non-profit (supporting free knowledge projects)
- Visa Sponsorship: N/A (Hired via local Employer of Record outside US)
- Relocation Assistance: N/A
- Working Hours: Core hours 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM UTC (approx.)
Technical Stack
- Core (Must-Have):
- JavaScript
- PHP
- CSS
- Object-oriented development
- Unit testing
- Version control
- Algorithms and Data Structures
- Nice-to-Have:
- Building rich-text editors
- Working with large, legacy codebases
- Experience with the MediaWiki API
Role & Responsibilities
- Key Responsibilities:
- Fix bugs and implement new features to improve the Wikipedia editing experience.
- Iterate on new features through cross-functional collaboration.
- Write multilingual, accessible, and performant code.
- Build on the MediaWiki API ecosystem.
- Instrument components for monitoring feature behavior.
- Must-Have Qualifications:
- 2-5 years related professional or open-source software engineering experience.
- Experience with object-oriented development using scripting languages (JS, PHP, Python, Ruby).
- Experience with unit testing and version control.
- Strong written communication skills for online collaboration.
- Strong aptitude in algorithms and data structures.
- Nice-to-Have Qualifications:
- Experience building a rich-text editor.
- Experience working with large, legacy codebases.
- History of editing Wikimedia projects or open-source contributions.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Mathematics, or equivalent experience.
Company & Culture
- Benefits Highlights:
- Competitive salary (adjusted by location)
- Work-life balance emphasis
- Opportunity to contribute to free knowledge and open access
- Potential Red Flags / Things to Note:
- Required core hours overlap (3:00 PM - 6:00 PM UTC).
- Hiring outside the US is through a third-party Employer of Record (EOR).
- Salary range outside the US is adjusted and must be confirmed during the interview process.
- Company Culture Snippets:
- Distributed, remote-first organization.
- Values teamwork and consensus.
- Emphasis on clear synchronous and asynchronous communication.
- Values diversity and inclusion.
Software Engineer III – Editing Team
Location: Candidates must be within the UTC-5 to UTC+2 time zones.
Core Working Hours: 3:00 PM to 5:30 PM UTC - 6:00 PM UTC.
Summary
The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a software engineer to join our team, reporting to product engineering management. As a software engineer, you will be responsible for engineering software that supports our product user experiences. In this role, you will work in a distributed environment, where we value teamwork and a consensus-oriented approach. You get to write open source code for collaborative experiences supporting a worldwide top-ten website (over a half a billion pages accessed per day), and you get to do it at a place that believes we're all more successful when everyone has a good work-life balance.
On the Editing Team, we support new and experienced volunteers working in 300+ languages with the tools they need to keep Wikipedia accurate and up to date. The team's main area of focus is the flagship VisualEditor, our industry-leading rich-text editing platform which we have been extending to serve new use cases (e.g. DiscussionTools to support on-wiki communication) and unlock new capabilities that lower the barriers people encounter when contributing to Wikipedia. The latest capability being Edit Check, an open-ended system designed to surface actionable pieces of feedback and suggestions that help volunteers improve the quality and integrity of the information Wikipedia offers.
You are responsible for:
Improving the Wikipedia product experience by fixing bugs and implementing new functionality.
Iterating on new features through collaboration with fellow engineers, product managers, designers, other teams, and community members.
Writing multilingual, accessible, and performant code using Javascript and PHP.
Building on top of the MediaWiki API ecosystem.
Instrumenting components to monitor feature behavior and quality characteristics.
Skills and experience:
2–5 years related professional or open-source software engineering experience.
Experience with object-oriented development using a scripting language (such as JavaScript, PHP, Python or Ruby). Most of our work is in JavaScript, PHP and CSS.
Focused software engineering: you have experience of writing unit tests, and of structuring your work with version control.
Strong written communication skills as our collaboration largely happens online, on chats, wikis, documents and tickets.
Qualities that are important to us:
A desire to make meaningful contributions to knowledge equity, free culture, and open access.
An emphasis on communicating clearly in both synchronous and asynchronous channels.A strong aptitude in algorithms and data structures is essential!
A desire to write well-documented and maintainable code.
The willingness to participate in technical discussions, proposing solutions to technical challenges, participating in code reviews and receiving feedback.
An eagerness and curiosity to solve technical problems, trying things out and investigating issues, and supporting the work of others.
Additionally, we'd love it if you have this:
Experience building a rich-text editor.
Experience working with large, legacy codebases.
A history of editing on Wikimedia projects.
A history of open-source contribution.
Bachelor's degree in computer science or mathematics, or equivalent experience.
We’d love to hear from you — even if you don’t meet 100% of the criteria listed here. Most important is the aptitude to solve hard problems. Algorithms and data structures are extremely important in our products, so if this sounds interesting, come and talk to us!
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.
The Wikimedia Foundation is a charitable, not-for-profit organization that relies on donations. We receive donations from millions of individuals around the world, with an average donation of about $15. We also receive donations through institutional grants and gifts. The Wikimedia Foundation is a United States 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization with offices in San Francisco, California, USA. As an equal opportunity employer, the Wikimedia Foundation values having a diverse workforce and continuously strives to maintain an inclusive and equitable workplace. We encourage people with a diverse range of backgrounds to apply. We do not discriminate against any person based upon their race, traits historically associated with race, religion, color, national origin, sex, pregnancy or related medical conditions, parental status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, or any other legally protected characteristics. The Wikimedia Foundation is a remote-first organization with staff members including contractors based 40+ countries. Salaries at the Wikimedia Foundation are set in a way that is competitive, equitable, and consistent with our values and culture. The anticipated annual pay range of this position for applicants based within the United States is US$88,975 to US$139,056 with multiple individualized factors, including cost of living in the location, being the determinants of the offered pay. For applicants located outside of the US, the pay range will be adjusted to the country of hire. We neither ask for nor take into consideration the salary history of applicants. The compensation for a successful applicant will be based on their skills, experience and location. Our non-US employees are hired through a local third party Employer of Record (EOR). We periodically review this list to streamline to ensure alignment with our hiring requirements. All applicants can reach out to their recruiter to understand more about the specific pay range for their location during the interview process.
Location: Candidates must be within the UTC-5 to UTC+2 time zones.
Core Working Hours: 3:00 PM to 5:30 PM UTC - 6:00 PM UTC.
Summary
The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a software engineer to join our team, reporting to product engineering management. As a software engineer, you will be responsible for engineering software that supports our product user experiences. In this role, you will work in a distributed environment, where we value teamwork and a consensus-oriented approach. You get to write open source code for collaborative experiences supporting a worldwide top-ten website (over a half a billion pages accessed per day), and you get to do it at a place that believes we're all more successful when everyone has a good work-life balance.
On the Editing Team, we support new and experienced volunteers working in 300+ languages with the tools they need to keep Wikipedia accurate and up to date. The team's main area of focus is the flagship VisualEditor, our industry-leading rich-text editing platform which we have been extending to serve new use cases (e.g. DiscussionTools to support on-wiki communication) and unlock new capabilities that lower the barriers people encounter when contributing to Wikipedia. The latest capability being Edit Check, an open-ended system designed to surface actionable pieces of feedback and suggestions that help volunteers improve the quality and integrity of the information Wikipedia offers.
You are responsible for:
Improving the Wikipedia product experience by fixing bugs and implementing new functionality.
Iterating on new features through collaboration with fellow engineers, product managers, designers, other teams, and community members.
Writing multilingual, accessible, and performant code using Javascript and PHP.
Building on top of the MediaWiki API ecosystem.
Instrumenting components to monitor feature behavior and quality characteristics.
Skills and experience:
2–5 years related professional or open-source software engineering experience.
Experience with object-oriented development using a scripting language (such as JavaScript, PHP, Python or Ruby). Most of our work is in JavaScript, PHP and CSS.
Focused software engineering: you have experience of writing unit tests, and of structuring your work with version control.
Strong written communication skills as our collaboration largely happens online, on chats, wikis, documents and tickets.
Qualities that are important to us:
A desire to make meaningful contributions to knowledge equity, free culture, and open access.
An emphasis on communicating clearly in both synchronous and asynchronous channels.A strong aptitude in algorithms and data structures is essential!
A desire to write well-documented and maintainable code.
The willingness to participate in technical discussions, proposing solutions to technical challenges, participating in code reviews and receiving feedback.
An eagerness and curiosity to solve technical problems, trying things out and investigating issues, and supporting the work of others.
Additionally, we'd love it if you have this:
Experience building a rich-text editor.
Experience working with large, legacy codebases.
A history of editing on Wikimedia projects.
A history of open-source contribution.
Bachelor's degree in computer science or mathematics, or equivalent experience.
We’d love to hear from you — even if you don’t meet 100% of the criteria listed here. Most important is the aptitude to solve hard problems. Algorithms and data structures are extremely important in our products, so if this sounds interesting, come and talk to us!
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.
The Wikimedia Foundation is a charitable, not-for-profit organization that relies on donations. We receive donations from millions of individuals around the world, with an average donation of about $15. We also receive donations through institutional grants and gifts. The Wikimedia Foundation is a United States 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization with offices in San Francisco, California, USA. As an equal opportunity employer, the Wikimedia Foundation values having a diverse workforce and continuously strives to maintain an inclusive and equitable workplace. We encourage people with a diverse range of backgrounds to apply. We do not discriminate against any person based upon their race, traits historically associated with race, religion, color, national origin, sex, pregnancy or related medical conditions, parental status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, or any other legally protected characteristics. The Wikimedia Foundation is a remote-first organization with staff members including contractors based 40+ countries. Salaries at the Wikimedia Foundation are set in a way that is competitive, equitable, and consistent with our values and culture. The anticipated annual pay range of this position for applicants based within the United States is US$88,975 to US$139,056 with multiple individualized factors, including cost of living in the location, being the determinants of the offered pay. For applicants located outside of the US, the pay range will be adjusted to the country of hire. We neither ask for nor take into consideration the salary history of applicants. The compensation for a successful applicant will be based on their skills, experience and location. Our non-US employees are hired through a local third party Employer of Record (EOR). We periodically review this list to streamline to ensure alignment with our hiring requirements. All applicants can reach out to their recruiter to understand more about the specific pay range for their location during the interview process.
Job Details
Salary
US$88,975 to US$139,056
Location
Remote / USA
Key Skills
RubyJavascriptPythonUnit TestingPhpCssData StructuresAlgorithmsVersion ControlCoding Standards