Director of Data at the Wikimedia Foundation (Remote – UTC-8 to UTC+3)

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 Are you a deeply technical engineering leader with a passion for open knowledge and scalable data systems? The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization behind Wikipedia and its sister free knowledge projects, is hiring a Director of Data to guide strategic initiatives across data engineering, search, experimentation, and data-focused site reliability engineering (SRE).

Wikipedia is a top-ten global website available in 300+ languages and accessed by over one billion people each month. The data platforms you will influence power machine learning capabilities, product analytics, public research datasets, and mission-driven community tools. In this leadership role, you’ll ensure Wikimedia evolves world-class, privacy-respecting data systems built transparently and collaboratively.

This position is open to candidates located within UTC-8 to UTC+3 time zones.

Role Overview

As Director of Data, you will:

  • Lead multiple technical teams including Data Engineering, Search, Experimentation, and Data SRE.

  • Manage managers and principal individual contributors.

  • Establish production-ready standards and roadmap execution requirements.

  • Drive incremental, safe releases aligned with product goals and community expectations.

  • Scale best practices across petabyte-scale data lakes, event pipelines, and experimentation stacks.

  • Champion privacy by design, data governance, and operational efficiency.

  • Collaborate closely with product leadership to balance innovation and reliability.

You’ll be accountable for the quality, performance, observability, and evolution of data platforms that millions rely on daily.

What You’ll Do

In this role, you will:

✅ Drive incremental delivery across search, experimentation, and data systems
✅ Coach leaders, develop strong engineering cultures, and support global hiring
✅ Provide strategic architectural oversight using event-driven principles
✅ Collaborate with product management to meet diverse stakeholder needs
✅ Reduce operational toil by championing shared tooling and automation patterns
✅ Partner with volunteer communities across the open knowledge ecosystem

What You Bring

You are:

  • Strongly technical, capable of analyzing architecture docs, PRs, and system designs

  • Operationally mature, experienced with error budgets, SLOs, and vendor management

  • Collaborative, forming cross-functional partnerships to achieve shared outcomes

  • Mission-aligned, committed to open knowledge, transparency, and privacy

Required Skills & Experience

  • 8+ years of engineering leadership experience

  • 3+ years managing managers in data-centric backend environments

  • Demonstrated success with production systems at massive scale

  • Hands-on familiarity with open-source ecosystems including:

    • Kubernetes

    • Kafka

    • Spark / Flink

    • Hadoop / Ceph

    • Airflow

  • Proven ability to hire and lead distributed remote teams

Bonus Points For

  • Participation in open-source communities

  • Experience as a contributor in volunteer-driven environments

  • Fluency in additional languages besides English

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation supports:

  • Wikipedia

  • Wikimedia Commons

  • Wikidata

  • Additional sister projects that power free knowledge

Its mission is to ensure everyone can freely share and access the sum of human knowledge. The Foundation designs collaborative software experiences, supports global volunteer communities, and advocates for policies that strengthen access to knowledge.

Compensation & Benefits

Wikimedia offers competitive compensation grounded in transparency and equity.

For U.S.-based candidates, the anticipated salary range is:

$179,376 – $279,262 USD annually, with final figures based on:

  • Skills

  • Experience

  • Location

  • Cost of labor

Outside the U.S., pay is adjusted to local market benchmarks.

Additional benefits include:

  • Remote-first work culture

  • Global support infrastructure

  • Positive, inclusive engineering environment

Where We Hire

This position is open to candidates located in 40+ countries including:

Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, Egypt, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay…and more.

Non-U.S. hires are supported via a local Employer of Record.

Diversity & Inclusion

Wikimedia is an equal opportunity employer committed to building a globally inclusive workforce. Applicants are welcomed regardless of:

  • Race

  • Gender identity and expression

  • Age

  • Disability status

  • Sexual orientation

  • National origin

  • Veteran status

  • Religion

Reasonable accommodations are available throughout the interview and hiring process.

How to Apply

Apply online through the official posting:

👉 Submit Your Application Here:
https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/7306305

For more remote and multinational job opportunities in NGOs, embassies, international organizations, and global nonprofits, visit Careers Nigeria.

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