Engineering Manager, Tools Platform

Engineering Manager, Tools Platform

The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking an experienced and mission-driven Engineering Manager to lead our new Tools Platform Team—a group dedicated to building and evolving Toolforge, the backbone platform that powers over 3,300 community-built tools responsible for nearly 30% of all edits across Wikipedia and its sister projects.

This is a critical leadership role at the intersection of infrastructure and contributor experience. You will guide a team focused on transforming Toolforge into a production-grade platform that is not only reliable and scalable, but also intuitive, inclusive, and empowering for technical contributors at every level of expertise.

PLEASE NOTE: We will only be considering hiring within UTC-3 to UTC+3 due to the geographical location of the team.

Why this role matters
Tool developers are essential to the health and innovation of the Wikimedia movement. They automate repetitive tasks, power bots, visualize data, and build workflows that serve editors and readers around the world. As Engineering Manager, you will lead the team making that developer experience simpler, faster, and more accessible—while ensuring the platform evolves in alignment with Wikimedia’s technical and strategic goals.

You’Ll Be Responsible For:

• Leading a team of engineers in building and maintaining the core services that power Toolforge and associated developer platforms like our shared Jupyter notebooks platform.
• Simplify the full tool lifecycle—from creation to deprecation—so contributors can build and maintain tools without needing to become sysadmins.
• Driving the transition of Toolforge to production-level reliability, using technologies like Kubernetes, Helm, and observability stacks common to Wikimedia’s production environment.
• Collaborating with product, SRE, developer advocacy, and community contributors to deliver high-impact improvements across developer workflows.
• Setting direction, unblocking work, and ensuring delivery against technical and organizational goals.
• Hiring and developing a high-performing, inclusive engineering team with strong ownership and a shared sense of mission.

What We’Re Looking For:

• Experience managing engineering teams responsible for infrastructure, platform, or developer-facing tools.
• Strong technical background with experience in systems engineering, cloud infrastructure (Kubernetes, OpenStack, etc.), and developer platform architecture.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional collaboration and product-oriented development in open communities or large-scale developer ecosystems.
• Excellent communication and facilitation skills, especially in distributed and asynchronous environments.

Bonus Points If You Have:

• Experience contributing to or leading in open-source projects.
• Familiarity with Toolforge, PAWS, Wikimedia Cloud Services, or similar contributor platforms.
• A passion for building inclusive platforms that lower barriers to entry and empower diverse contributors.

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 40+ countries*. Salaries at the Wikimedia Foundation are set in a way that is 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 $132,439 to $208,378  with multiple individualized factors, including cost of living in the location, being the determinants of the offered pay. For applicants located outside of the US, the pay range will be adjusted to the country of hire. We neither 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. 

*Please note that we are currently able to hire in the following countries: Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Peru, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States of America and Uruguay.  Our non-US employees are hired through a local third party Employer of Record (EOR). 

We periodically review this list to streamline to ensure alignment with our hiring requirements. 

All applicants can reach out to their recruiter to understand more about the specific pay range for their location during the interview process.

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 recruiting@wikimedia.org or +1 (415) 839-6885.

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