The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a Staff Software Engineer to lead technical innovation within the Tools Platform team. You'll play a central role in evolving Toolforge, the infrastructure that empowers over 3,300 community-developed tools and supports a significant portion of Wikipedia's editing activity. Your work will center on refining the developer experience, from creation to maintenance, through thoughtful software design and platform improvements.
Key Responsibilities
- Provide senior-level technical direction for the software and product layers of Toolforge, ensuring scalability and usability.
- Design and implement platform features that streamline how developers build, deploy, and troubleshoot tools.
- Lead the redesign of user interfaces for tool creation and lifecycle management to improve accessibility and efficiency.
- Define standardized workflows for common use cases like bots, web applications, and data processing tools.
- Collaborate with Site Reliability Engineers to align platform development with production infrastructure and operational standards.
- Strengthen team capabilities through mentorship, code reviews, and guidance on system architecture and best practices.
Qualifications
You bring deep experience in building developer-facing platforms and infrastructure systems. A strong foundation in backend services, APIs, and user-centric tooling is essential. You’re skilled at working across disciplines—partnering with product teams, SREs, developer advocates, and volunteer contributors—in open, distributed environments.
Preferred candidates will have contributed to or led open-source initiatives, have familiarity with large-scale contributor platforms, or have direct experience with Toolforge or similar environments. A passion for lowering technical barriers and improving developer onboarding is highly valued.
Work Environment
This is a remote-first role with hiring limited to applicants in time zones UTC-3 to UTC+3. The organization supports a globally distributed team across more than 40 countries, operating in an asynchronous, inclusive, and transparent culture. Work authorization support is available internationally through an Employer of Record service.
Compensation is competitive and set equitably, ranging from US$134,000 to US$208,000 for U.S. hires, with adjustments based on location, experience, and skills. The foundation is committed to equity, inclusion, and equal opportunity, and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, age, disability, or other protected characteristics.
