Overview

The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization supporting Wikipedia and other wiki projects. We operate one of the world’s top ten websites and have global reach and impact. Technology and innovation is critical in our quest to support every human in sharing knowledge.

Background

The Wikimedia Commons project is the world’s largest repository of freely licensed educational media. The Wikimedia Foundation has embarked on a project to partner with the Commons community to integrate machine-readable data into this project to make the content more accessible to the world.

We’re are looking for a UX Designer to help us design experiences around consuming, curating, and contributing multimedia content on Wikimedia projects.

We’d like you to do these things:

  • Create experiences that go beyond good design, into delighting users.
  • See features through from idea to implementation.
  • Work with our growing team of designers to create reusable design patterns that span desktop, tablet and phone.
  • Interact with our community throughout the design process.
  • Illustrate your designs with lightweight specs or living documents to engage with developers.
  • Provide design support for other functional teams, as well as driving forward the product roadmap with your own ideas and features.
  • Distill complex concepts into simple, easy to understand talking points to effectively articulate your vision with your team and the community.
  • Be active in soliciting feedback from your design team, as well as other functional groups, and be active in reaching out to team members both in the office and remote.
  • Reduce, simplify, distill. Know how to let go. Create experiences that are effortless for users by reducing UI complexity to its essential components.

We’d like you to have these skills:

The right person is better than the right set of experiences. These are the traits we’ve identified that make great additions to our team.

  • Have great instincts for making design decisions and be able to support your choices with research and data.
  • Ability to tell stories that convey your design goals both internally to team members and to stakeholders.
  • Have a creative vision of your own while being able to work within the bounds of what is possible, and imagine what can come next.
  • 4+ years of experience solving complex product design problems, knowing when to borrow, copy, and steal, knowing when to reinvent.
  • Know when to switch from blue sky ideation to tactical thinking. Be able to deliver effective, constructive critique, and to listen to and accept design criticism.
  • Bachelor’s degree in a related field or the equivalent in work experience.

And it would be even more awesome if you have this:
In addition to the basic skills needed for being successful these skills could set you apart from the pack!

  • Ability to prototype your designs in working code.
  • Experience acting as researcher, both in-person and with remote participants.
  • Go beyond wireframes to pixel level design. Create and utilize visual design patterns to finish out your features rather than needing to hand off to a visual designer.
  • Have familiarity with Free and Open Source communities.
  • Bring your designs to life, leverage your experience with motion design to go beyond aesthetics to have functional animation that seamlessly teaches as well as delights.
  • Speak more than one of the 286 languages of the users you’ll be designing for.
  • Anything else that will let us know more about who you are, WMF project user name, your blog, instagram, dribbble, Twitter, github etc.

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that supports and hosts Wikipedia and several other Wikimedia free knowledge sites. Every month, the Wikimedia sites are accessed by more than a billion unique devices. Wikipedia consists of more than 40 million articles across hundreds of languages. Every month, more than 70,000 volunteer editors contribute to Wikipedia. Based in San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation is an audited, 501(c)(3) non-profit that is funded primarily through donations and grants. It currently employs over 240 staff members.

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, massages, cooking classes 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