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Wikimedia Deutschland – Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V. is a non-profit organisation based in Berlin, Germany. With over 150 employees and about 100,000 members, it is the oldest and largest of about 40 independent chapters of the international Wikimedia movement. The best known Wikimedia project, the free online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, is used by millions of people across the world every day and is continuously updated and improved by millions of users. 

Wikimedia Deutschland promotes these ideals even beyond the free encyclopaedia; it is our aim to establish and advocate for the creation, collection, and distribution of free knowledge in all parts of society. The Wikimedia vision is to create a world in which the sum of all human knowledge is freely accessible for everyone. The main focus of our activities is the support of volunteers, the development of technology and software, and the cooperation with cultural and scientific institutions. Furthermore, we advocate on both the national and EU-level a legal framework which allows for free knowledge to become part of our everyday life.

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer (m/f/d) (Full time / Part time min. 30 hpw) to join and support one of our agile development teams.

About the position:

You will be working with the team that develops and improves the software behind the Wikibase Cloud project. You will be developing open source software that puts user needs first and increases users’ satisfaction, and help us run a platform built on this software. Wikibase has the goal of giving more people access to knowledge and you will be part of that!

Among your tasks there will be the following:

  • Participate in all the stages of software development like code, design, and do architectural reviews providing constructive feedback
  • Be responsible for all stages of the engineering work: identifying and making technical issues visible, considering different approaches and selecting the most appropriate solution together with the team, as well as outlining the required steps and implementing them
  • Support the technical direction of the team 
  • Understand and discuss mid- and long-term implications of architectural resolutions and be able to communicate the impact of engineering decisions on our products to internal and external stakeholders.
  • Maintain a good understanding of the technical aspects of the product roadmap as well as the team goals
  • Work with managers and technical leads to ensure engineering effort is focused on the most impactful areas for their team
  • Support the professional growth of other engineers together with engineering managers and technical leads
  • Engage in constantly improving the team processes and agile practices
  • Work with gitops, kubernetes, terraform, and maintain cloud infrastructures and containerised environments

What we offer:

  • You will have a noticeable impact on a community-first cloud service that will allow more people to build Wikibases, furthering the access and proliferation of linked open data
  • You will be part of a cohesive and engaged team that fosters unity and supports each other
  • Flexible working hours adjusted to the team and people needs
  • A diverse and inclusive bi-lingual organisation where people are the first priority
  • Work in cross-functional teams towards a common goal
  • A working culture that supports releasing a good product over releasing in order to meet a deadline
  • We dedicate one day per quarter in the department to work on any non-work-related project you want 
  • A yearly learning budget that you choose how to spend to support you in your personal and professional development
  • You can attend local user groups during working hours
  • Opportunity to improve your presentation skills and to share your favourite topics in internal presentations to the other engineering teams
  • Opportunity to go to conferences, both as participants and contributors
  • The possibility of working from home when needed as well as a modern and centrally located office space - at the heart of Berlin - with a fully equipped kitchen, different sized meeting rooms and working spaces
  • This is a permanent contract.
  • And a lot more: 30 days of holidays,  public transport allowance, access to complementary pension benefits, continued salary in the event of ill children, free-of-cost external life coaching

Learn more about our team by visiting our Wikimedia Tech News Blog. 

 

About you:

  • You are passionate and care about software
  • Your background is not important as long as you have a solid understanding and experience with object oriented programming and experience with web development
  • You have prior work experience in cloud environments and their infrastructure
  • You like being in a team working towards a common goal, learning together, and supporting and lifting up your peers
  • You have an eye for software design and quality and you understand the importance of tests
  • You can recognize legacy code and know how to effectively deal with it
  • You like to participate in technical discussions and are open to new ideas
  • You are a fan of innovation and like to promote innovative approaches within the team
  • You are not afraid of making mistakes and you learn from them
  • You want to keep learning and developing yourself
  • You are able to communicate fluently in English

Technologies we use:

Knowledge and experience in these technologies is not a requirement. We believe they all can be learned on the job and WMDE, your team, and your line manager will support you in this learning. We list only a few of them here. 

Most of our server side code is written in PHP and for version control we use Git. We use Vue.js and TypeScript for our modern frontends. For our cloud infrastructure, we are currently using Kubernetes and Terraform. We also keep migrating our legacy code into these and newer technologies. Also, testing is important to us; we use testing frameworks and practice continuous integration across our projects.

Interested?

Then apply now! Send us your detailed application documents (Resume & Motivational Letter (yes, we read them) via our job portal. Our HR  team will be happy to answer your questions. We kindly ask you to refrain from application photos and information on date of birth, marital status and parents. We look forward to hearing from you!

Wikimedia Germany is committed to equal opportunities and does not discriminate on the basis of, for example, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion or belief, political or other convictions, gender, age, disability or sexual identity or orientation.

In light of an underrepresentation of women in our engineering teams, we very much welcome a broad diversity of candidates.

Due to the current COVID - 19 situation, job interviews will only take place digitally.