SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER, PARSING
Summary
The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for product software engineers to join our team, reporting to product engineering management. As a product software engineer, you will be responsible for software engineering for our product user experiences. In this role, you will work in a mostly-remote environment, where we value teamwork and a consensus-oriented approach. You get to write open source code for collaborative experiences supporting over a half a billion pages accessed per day, and you get to do it at a place that believes we're all more successful when everyone has a good work-life balance.
On the Parsing team, we work to support and evolve all things wikitext, the markup language behind Wikipedia. We aim to make wikitext easier to write, faster to parse, and less error-prone for humans. We also strive to support editing and content analysis tools with structured representations (ex: DOM).
You are responsible for:
- Improving the Wikipedia product experience by fixing bugs and implementing new functionality in wikitext processing
- Iterating on the evolution of wikitext to structured semantics through collaboration with product managers, designers, client teams, and other engineers
- Writing multilingual and accessible JavaScript and PHP
- Creating and maintaining internet APIs with server scripting languages
- Instrumenting components to monitor feature and quality characteristics
- Leveraging caching and persistence technologies
Skills and experience:
- Academic or professional work in one or more of the following areas
- Parsers, interpreters, or compilers
- Programming language runtimes
- Projects involving domain specific languages or markup languages
- Projects demonstrating expert knowledge of the HTML5 or DOM specifications
- 4+ years related professional experience in functional programming or OOP
- Experience building software components with good performance
- Focused software engineering: you enjoy writing unit and integration tests, proactively addressing security and code review feedback, and thoughtfully balancing architectural tradeoffs
Qualities that are important to us:
- A desire to make meaningful contributions to knowledge equity, free culture, and open access
- An emphasis on communicating clearly in both synchronous and asynchronous channels
- The Wikimedia ecosystem is complex, resources are limited, and our guiding principles are ambitious. You should be able to navigate that to solve problems
- Self motivated with an ability to navigate through ambiguity and bring a project to completion with limited direction
Additionally, we'd love it if you have this:
- Familiarity with the HTML5 spec and DOM manipulation
- Familiarity with Wikipedia / wikitext / markdown editing or content management systems (e.g., MediaWiki, Drupal, WordPress)
- A history of open source contribution
- Experience bringing a language feature through a product cycle
- Experience working with large legacy codebases
- Bachelor's, master's, or doctorate degree in computer science, management information systems, or STEM field (or equivalent certification)
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 22 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.
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