Overview

The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a Software Engineer to join the MediaWiki Platform Team. The MediaWiki Platform Team is responsible for maintenance and development of the MediaWiki core, the platform that powers Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation websites. MediaWiki is a PHP/MySQL web application that has been incrementally developed over the past 15 years to become a richly featured wiki engine, and the basis for hundreds of extensions and skins. MediaWiki is an open source product with a vibrant volunteer community.

We are looking for a Software Engineer who will work collaboratively with our feature teams to provide great new features to our users. You will also work with SRE and Performance teams to ensure MediaWiki continues to scale and remain highly available for the millions of users who depend on us.

Description

  • Design, develop, test, and deploy new features and improvements to MediaWiki.
  • Triage, diagnose, and fix reported bugs in MediaWiki
  • Maintain extensions to the PHP engine.
  • Partner with Foundation staff and volunteers on software design, development, review, testing and evaluation.
  • Help identify and implement best practices in engineering processes across the team.
  • Work and communicate effectively within a small team distributed across multiple time zones.

Requirements

  • Relevant Bachelor’s degree OR 5 years software development experience
  • Proficient in PHP and MySQL

Pluses

  • Substantial code samples which you can show us
  • Experience with Linux, memcached, Redis, content distribution networks
  • Experience with C/C++ and JavaScript
  • Familiarity with web protocols and standards: HTML, CSS, HTTP
  • Experience with open source software development
  • Experience with MediaWiki or Wikimedia projects

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