Senior Site Reliability Engineer, Infrastructure Foundations at Wikimedia

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. 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. The Wikimedia Foundation is a remote-first organization with staff members including contractors based in 40+ countries.

Your Role

The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a Senior Site Reliability Engineer to support and develop the platform serving the world’s favorite encyclopedia, Wikipedia, to millions of people around the globe. Wikimedia’s Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team is principally responsible for ensuring our global top-10 website and its underlying infrastructure is healthy and developing further in support of Wikimedia’s mission: to help everyone share in the sum of all knowledge. The SRE team at Wikimedia is a globally distributed and diverse team of engineers with a drive to explore, experiment, and embrace new technologies. We work in the open by publishing all of our documentation, code, and configuration as open source, and all our production systems are powered by open-source software. We invite you to go through our documentation and code – no login required. If you find what we do interesting, if you are up to the challenge of improving the reliability and delivery of one of the Internet’s top websites, and you enjoy the idea of working in a remote-first role, we may just be the right place for you.

Responsibilities:

• Perform day-to-day operational/DevOps tasks on Wikimedia’s public-facing infrastructure (deployment, maintenance, configuration, troubleshooting).
• Implement and utilize configuration management and deployment tools (Puppet, Kubernetes).
• Lead continuous improvement by automating the installation, configuration, and maintenance of services on our platform.
• Work closely with product teams, helping them bring scalable functionality to our users by assisting in the architectural design of new services and ensuring they operate at scale.
• Participate in a 24/7 on-call rotation shared across the broader SRE team. This includes taking part in incident response, diagnosis, and follow-up on system outages or alerts across Wikimedia’s production infrastructure.
• Collaborate with a global, cross-functional team in an asynchronous communication environment.
• Mentor peers in your areas of technical and operational strength.
• Ability and willingness to travel 1-2 times a year for in-person events and team meetings.
• Most importantly, share our values and work in accordance with them.

Skills and Experience:

• 6+ years of experience in an SRE/Operations/DevOps role as part of a team.
• Experience with shell scripting and any scripting languages used in an SRE context (Python, Golang, Bash, Ruby; we primarily use Python) and configuration management tools (Puppet, Ansible; we use Puppet).
• Experience designing and managing infrastructure security for large fleets of diverse services.
• Experience with technical response during security incidents.
• Experience with package management on Linux systems (we use Debian).
• Strong Linux system-level troubleshooting skills.
• History of automating tasks and processes, identifying process gaps, and finding automation opportunities.
• Strong English language skills (verbal and written) and ability to work independently, as an effective part of a globally distributed team working across multiple time zones.
• Experience leading and participating in incident response and post-incident review rituals, with the goal of conducting root cause analysis and implementing preventive measures.

Additionally, we’d love it if you have:

• Experience setting and implementing fleet-wide security policies.
• Experience with software supply chain security.
• Awareness of the current open-source infrastructure security landscape.
• Experience working together with software security teams.
• Experience with credential management systems.
• Experience implementing immutable logging and auditing.
• Experience with the use, maintenance, and configuration of monitoring, metrics, and logging infrastructure (Prometheus, Grafana, etc.).
• Developing/contributing to Free and Open Source software, or being part of an open-source community (share your favorite pull requests!).
• Experience with LAMP stack technologies (PHP/HHVM, memcached/Redis) – MediaWiki experience is a definite plus.
• Experience with defining cross-team SLOs and their implementation.

U.S. Benefits & Perks

Salaries at the Wikimedia Foundation are set to be 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$113,082 to US$175,725. Multiple individualized factors, including the cost of living in the location, will be determinants of the offered pay. For applicants located outside of the US, the pay range will be adjusted to the country of hire. We do not 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.

We provide all team members with additional benefits, which reflect our values and ideals. We balance our programs to meet local needs and ensure fairness globally.

• Distributed work environment with twice-yearly team sprints in person.
• Personal Learning Budget of USD 2,000 per year.
• Annual compensation review.
• Recognition rewards.
• Annual holiday leave.
• Paid Parental Leave.
• Employee Assistance Programme (Wellness Programs).
• Opportunity to travel to new locations to meet colleagues.
• Priority Pass for travel and travel upgrades for long-haul company events.

The Wikimedia Foundation is committed to providing equal work opportunities to all team members and applicants. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any type on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, caste, religion, age, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by our policies or federal, state, or local laws. 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 [email protected] or +1 (415) 839-6885.