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Engineering Manager, Site Reliability Engineering 🔥


Engineering Manager, Site Reliability Engineering (Service Operations)

Summary

The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for an Engineering Manager to join our SRE Service Operations team, reporting to the Director of Site Reliability Engineering.  As Engineering Manager, you will be responsible for supporting the engineers developing our infrastructure platform and the applications and services that depend on it, used by hundreds of millions of people around the world.

You are responsible for:

  • Managing one to two globally distributed teams within Wikimedia’s Site Reliability Engineering organization
  • Recruiting, hiring, and helping onboard new team members
  • Working with team members to set individual performance goals, and supporting them in meeting and evolving their goals and career path
  • Triaging incoming workload, maintaining focus on priorities, and setting realistic expectations for both peers and team members
  • Coordinating and communicating with other members of the Wikimedia engineering teams on relevant projects, and contributing to the organizational strategy
  • Continuously developing the roadmap of the team in alignment with other SRE and Technology teams, and helping to draft and execute the team’s annual and quarterly plans
  • Project managing new and existing initiatives
  • Leading the definition, refinement, and execution of the processes through which the team manages and performs work
  • Leading incident response, diagnosis, and follow-up on system alerts and outages across Wikimedia’s production infrastructure
  • Facilitate the definition and establishment of Service Level Objectives and track Error Budgets with service owners and stakeholders

Skills and Experience:

  • Prior experience managing teams
  • Prior hands-on experience with reliability engineering or software (within the last 3 years preferred)
  • Aptitude for automation and streamlining of tasks
  • Communicate effectively in both spoken and written English
  • Ability to work independently, as an effective part of a globally distributed team
  • Willing and able to travel several times a year for occasional in-person meetings
  • B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science or the equivalent in related work experience

Qualities that are important to us:

  • Commitment to the mission [1] of the organization and our values [2]
  • Commitment to our guiding principles [3]
  • Ability to disagree in a respectful manner and yet work towards a solution even when you disagree
  • Good at asynchronous communication 
  • Solutions-focused. The Wikimedia ecosystem is complex, resources are limited, and our guiding principles are ambitious. We want you to work to find solutions embracing these factors.
  • Self motivated with an ability to navigate through ambiguity and bring a project to completion with limited directions
  • Curiosity and commitment to learn

Additionally, we’d love it if you have:

  • Experience working in a distributed, largely remote environment
  • Experience contributing to open source projects
  • Experience working with a Kubernetes based platform to deploy services

The Wikimedia Foundation is... 

...the nonprofit organization that hosts and 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, free of interference. We host 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 financial support 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.

If you are a qualified applicant requiring assistance or an accommodation to complete any step of the application process due to a disability, you may contact us at recruiting@wikimedia.org or (415) 839-6885.

U.S. 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
  • Paid travel to Wikimedia Foundation events all around the world!
  • Equipment including a laptop, monitor, plus a one-time stipend to cover any additional needs to make sure you have the best work experience
  • Great colleagues - diverse staff and contractors speaking dozens of languages from around the world, fantastic intellectual discourse, mission-driven and intensely passionate people

*Please note that for remote roles located outside of the U.S., we defer to our PEO to ensure alignment with local labor laws.

More information

Wikimedia Foundation [4]
Applicant Privacy Policy [5]
Blog [6]
Wikimedia 2030 [7]
Our Commitment to Equity [8]
This is Wikimedia Foundation [9] 
Facts Matter [10]
Our Projects [11]
Our Tech Stack [12]


  1. https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/#:~:text=The%20mission%20of%20the%20Wikimedia,disseminate%20it%20effectively%20and%20globally.
  2. https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/values/
  3. https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Wikimedia_Foundation_Guiding_Principles
  4. https://wikimediafoundation.org/
  5. https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Applicant_privacy_policy
  6. https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/
  7. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017
  8. https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/we-stand-for-racial-justice-49c31afbabca
  9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQzZI0l3IOw
  10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ4ba28-oGs
  11. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects
  12. https://techblog.wikimedia.org/

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