Software Engineer

The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a software engineer to join the Product Safety and Integrity Team. Engineers at the Wikimedia Foundation get to work on technology that truly makes a global impact - powering Wikipedia and its sister projects, which serve billions of pageviews every month across hundreds of languages. It is a rare opportunity to contribute to one of the largest knowledge-sharing platforms in the world, and to help protect free access to information for everyone, everywhere.

In this role, you will work in a mostly-remote environment.

As a software engineer, you will work closely with the team to:

• Proactively develop and maintain tools that empower communities to identify, mitigate, and prevent various forms of abuse across Wikimedia projects.
• Design privacy-conscious systems that detect behavioral patterns indicative of abuse while minimizing false positives and respecting user anonymity.
• Continuously adapt abuse detection and mitigation strategies in response to changes in browser privacy standards, networking protocols, and platform architecture.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product managers, designers, and researchers to create holistic, human-centered solutions that balance safety and freedom.
• Write resilient, maintainable systems and high-quality code with a focus on long-term sustainability.
• Implement observability to maintain high levels of quality and system stability.
• Instrument and measure the impact of anti-abuse across Wikimedia projects.

• 1+ years related professional experience
• Experience building and maintaining large-scale applications
• Proficiency in PHP, Javascript or similar
• Proficiency in relational databases
• Strong foundation in security principles
• Experience in driving cross-team objectives
• Experience in driving user and product impact

Qualities that are important to us:

• Collaboration, humility, and a shared commitment to Wikimedia’s vision of free knowledge for all which guides everything we build
• Communicate with clarity and empathy, both in synchronous and asynchronous settings

Additionally, we’d love it if you have:

• Familiarity with abuse fighting or security concerns
• A history of open source contributions

The Wikimedia Foundation is a remote-first organization with staff members including contractors based 40+ countries*. Salaries at the Wikimedia Foundation are set in a way that is competitive, equitable, and consistent with our values and culture. The anticipated annual pay range of this position for applicants based within the United States is US$92,267 to US$144,201 with multiple individualized factors, including cost of living in the location, being the determinants of the offered pay. For applicants located outside of the US, the pay range will be adjusted to the country of hire. We neither ask for nor take into consideration the salary history of applicants. The compensation for a successful applicant will be based on their skills, experience and location.

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that 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 freely. We host Wikipedia and 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 donations 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.