The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to support the Wikidata Platform, which serves as the structured data backbone of Wikimedia projects and the global open knowledge ecosystem. The role focuses on scaling and sustaining the Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) and related services to ensure performance, reliability, and maintainability for growing usage.
Requirements
- 5+ years of experience as a backend or platform engineer working on distributed systems or data platforms
- Deep understanding of database and knowledge graph representation technologies and standards
- Proficiency in Java, C++, or other systems languages
- Experience building and operating production-grade services with SLOs
- Familiarity with modern observability tools (metrics, logging, tracing)
- Understanding of graph databases, search indexes, or data processing pipelines
- Experience working with knowledge graphs or RDF/SPARQL
Responsibilities
- 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
- 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
Other
- Working hours must overlap with UTC+1 to UTC-5 time zones
- 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
- Applicants must be based in one of the listed countries for hiring
- The Wikimedia Foundation is a remote-first organization with staff in over 40 countries
