About this role
About the Role The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join the Wikidata Platform team, helping scale and sustain the Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) and related platform services. You’ll work on backend systems and data pipelines, ensuring performance, reliability, and maintainability at scale. This is a fully remote role with overlapping hours across UTC+1 to UTC-5 (14:00–17:00 UTC). What You'll Do
- Design, build, and maintain backend systems and APIs that power Wikidata’s query infrastructure
- Improve reliability, observability, and automation of the Wikidata Query Service and data pipelines
- Integrate Wikidata Platform services with other systems and data sources across Wikimedia
- Collaborate with SRE, data engineers, and product teams to ensure stability and scalability under growing usage
- Monitor production systems, respond to operational incidents, and proactively identify and resolve bottlenecks
- Support platform migrations and system upgrades (e.g., triple stores, streaming ingestion)
- Contribute to deployment automation, CI/CD workflows, and service instrumentation
- Participate in code reviews, design discussions, and technical planning
- Document systems and share knowledge with team members and Wikimedia’s broader technical community What We're Looking For
- 5+ years of experience as a backend or platform engineer working on distributed systems or data platforms
- Deep understanding of database and/or knowledge graph representation technologies and standards
- Proficiency in Java, C++, or other systems languages. Ability to set up, scale, and investigate systems is more important than expertise in a particular language.
- Experience building and operating production-grade services with SLOs - good appreciation of scalability, performance, reliability and other non-functionals
- Familiarity with modern observability tools (metrics, logging, tracing)
- Experience in data processing systems such as graph databases, search indexes, or data processing pipelines
- Ability to work collaboratively across disciplines and communicate clearly across technical and non-technical audiences
- A commitment to learning, resilience, and contributing to a mission-driven engineering culture Nice to Have
- Experience working with knowledge graphs or RDF/SPARQL
- Familiarity with streaming data systems (e.g., Kafka, Flink)
- Comfort with CI/CD pipelines and containerization tools (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes)
- Experience in open source or open knowledge communities
- Familiarity with Wikimedia technologies, Wikidata, or MediaWiki Compensation & Benefits The anticipated annual pay range for applicants based in the United States is US$116,633 to US$181,243, with adjustments for location for applicants outside the US. Wikimedia Foundation is remote-first and hires in a limited set of US states (and globally where allowed). This role offers salary aligned with experience, location, and market rates; benefits information is available on request.