Wikimedia Engineering/Careers

The purpose of this page is to document the career paths and structure of Wikimedia Foundation's Engineering and Product Development efforts. It is not intended to be a listing of job openings or opportunities, or a sales pitch to work at WMF, but an inside view that's useful for current and potential employees and contractors. For this reason, it lives here on mediawiki.org, where it can be continuously updated by anyone.

Role and title are distinct. The title ties to a specific salary band in the organization that a position should typically be situated in. A person's role may change more frequently based on the organization's needs and the person's preferences. Examples of a person's role include e.g. ScrumMaster responsibilities on a team, leadership responsibilities for a specific technical project or area, interface responsibilities between teams, etc. These role designations are sometimes added alongside a person's title in the form "Title -- Role", and may be included in other contexts as well as a useful way to internally or externally highlight a person's responsibilities, but they are more likely subject to change.

Engineering-related career paths
Development track QA track Operations track Leadership track Specialized roles Potential future roles (TBD)
 * Software Engineer
 * Senior Software Engineer
 * (Lead) Architect
 * QA engineer
 * QA lead
 * Operations Engineer
 * Site Reliability Engineer
 * (Lead) Architect
 * Process manager (e.g. Release Manager)
 * Group manager
 * Director
 * VP of Engineering
 * Software Security Engineer
 * Operations Security Engineer
 * Technical Contributor Coordinator
 * Technical Communications Manager
 * Bug Wrangler
 * CTO (for technical as opposed to process leadership)

Product-related career paths
Supporting functions Product management track User Experience track Analytics Leadership track Potential future roles
 * Community Liaison
 * Business Analyst
 * Associate Product Manager
 * Product Manager
 * Senior Product Manager
 * Associate Designer (User Experience / Visual)
 * Designer (User Experience / Visual)
 * Senior Designer (User Experience / Visual)
 * Research Analyst
 * Senior Research Analyst
 * Director
 * VP of Product
 * Principal (could be the equivalent of Architect, e.g. Principal Designer)