Overview

The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization supporting Wikipedia and a suite of other wiki projects. We operate one of the world’s top ten websites and have global reach and impact. Innovation is critical to our mission to support every human in sharing knowledge. We are looking for a Program Manager to serve the Audiences Department that creates and runs products that allow users to edit and access Wikipedia from mobile devices and desktop computers.

The Program Manager will work with a small number of teams.  We are looking for someone who will become a trusted partner and a key member of the Audiences department, as well as someone who is passionate about making operational excellence a prominent part of our daily work.

Responsibilities:

  • Manage the the delivery of multiple projects including facilitation of shared understanding of timelines across multiple customer teams
  • Facilitate internal Product teams’ communications across teams and departments as well as throughout the larger organization
  • Develop  and support healthy team dynamics as well as a culture that welcomes diverse perspectives
  • Uphold a culture of accountability
  • Promote a culture of continuous improvement and process improvement
  • Partner with Product Owners while also supporting expert judgement of the team
  • Facilitate project planning, standups, retrospectives, and backlog grooming
  • Motivate teams to follow through on commitments to deliver outputs and enable outcomes

Qualifications:

  • BA/BS degree or equivalent in related work experience
  • Experience working in an international organization that has a distributed workforce and a very strong culture
  • 3+ years experience managing the release of customer-facing software from concept to production
  • Strong interpersonal skills including the ability to communicate effectively with all levels of the organization
  • A good listener whose people skills include leadership, diplomacy, and negotiation
  • Strong facilitation, problem solving, and decision-making skills
  • Solid command of Agile approaches to software development and their underlying principles
  • Strong prioritization, organization, planning, and time management skills
  • Ability to build relationships and trust, influence without authority, and effortlessly enforce accountability
  • Be the conscience that aligns decisions with organizational goals
  • Ability to persuade team members and stakeholders to negotiate mutually agreeable solutions and then motivate the team toward that shared goal
  • Identify simple solutions to complex problems and function well in ambiguity
  • Passion for process improvement with superb attention to detail
  • Strong knowledge of theoretical and practical aspects of project management including identifying stakeholders, defining requirements, crafting schedules, ensuring testing, and facilitating implementation
  • Ability to anticipate risks, resolve conflicts, and initiate escalation paths

Nice to haves

  • Passion for Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects
  • Understanding of free culture / free software / open source principles
  • Experience with, or understanding of, free knowledge, open source, free culture, or other online communities and operates with high sensitivity around culture with the goal to respect, preserve and enhance it

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that supports Wikipedia, the other Wikimedia free knowledge projects, and our mission of free knowledge for every single person. We help bring new knowledge to people around the world, lower barriers to participation, and make it easier for everyone to share what they know. We do this by keeping the Wikimedia projects fast, secure, and available to all, protecting the values and policies that allow free knowledge projects like Wikipedia to thrive, building new features and tools to make it easy to read, edit, and share from the Wikimedia sites, and by supporting the communities of volunteers who make the projects possible.

At the Foundation, we build technology to help people everywhere access Wikipedia, across devices and in nearly 300 languages. We engineer privacy for our readers and editors so they can safely and securely explore Wikipedia. We create programs and initiatives to make Wikipedia freely available to more people in more parts of the world. We build new tools for the community of editors so they can continue to improve and grow Wikipedia. Roughly a quarter of our budget goes to supporting the community that make the site possible, including through grantmaking programs that enable volunteers and enrich the information on the sites.

The Wikimedia Foundation is an equal opportunity employer, and we encourage people with a diverse range of backgrounds to apply.

Benefits & Perks *

  • Fully paid medical, dental and vision coverage for employees and their eligible families (yes, fully paid premiums!)
  • The Wellness Program provides reimbursement for mind, body and soul activities such as fitness memberships, baby sitting, continuing education and much more
  • The 401(k) retirement plan offers matched contributions at 4% of annual salary
  • Flexible and generous time off – vacation, sick and volunteer days, plus 19 paid holidays – including the last week of the year.
  • Family friendly! 100% paid new parent leave for seven weeks plus an additional five weeks for pregnancy, flexible options to phase back in after leave, fully equipped lactation room.
  • For those emergency moments – long and short term disability, life insurance (2x salary) and an employee assistance program
  • Pre-tax savings plans for health care, child care, elder care, public transportation and parking expenses
  • Telecommuting and flexible work schedules available
  • Appropriate fuel for thinking and coding (aka, a pantry full of treats) and monthly massages to help staff relax
  • Great colleagues – diverse staff and contractors speaking dozens of languages from around the world, fantastic intellectual discourse, mission-driven and intensely passionate people

* for benefits eligible staff, benefits may vary by location

More Information

https://wikimediafoundation.org

https://blog.wikimedia.org