Software Engineer

Responsibilities

• Help 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
• Integrate Wikidata Platform services with other systems and data sources across Wikimedia
• Develop features and capabilities to ensure stability and scalability under growing usage
• Monitor production systems, respond to operational incidents and resolve bottlenecks
• Support platform migrations and system upgrades
• Contribute to deployment automation, CI/CD workflows, and service instrumentation
• Participate in code reviews and design discussions
• Document systems and share knowledge with team members

Requirements

• 2+ years of experience as a backend or platform engineer working on distributed systems or data platforms
• Solid understanding of database and/or knowledge graph representation technologies
• 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)
• Familiarity with data processing technologies such as graph databases, search indexes, or data processing pipelines
• Ability to work collaboratively across disciplines

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working with knowledge graphs or RDF/SPARQL
• Familiarity with streaming data systems (e.g., Kafka, Flink)
• Comfort with CI/CD pipelines and containerization tools (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes)
• Experience in open source or open knowledge communities
• Familiarity with Wikimedia technologies, Wikidata, or MediaWiki

About the Company

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.