Open positions at Wikimedia Germany

[Sorry if this is not the right mailing list, please let me know about
better places to send this]


Early 2012, Wikimedia Germany e.V. will start the development of a new and
ambitious project that aims to change the Web once again [1]. We are
currently looking for a number of people to help us with realizing this
goal. The team will be based in Berlin, Germany, and the project aims to be
implemented in one year. After completion of the project, we expect many
more interesting software projects inspired by this one, so follow-up
projects might be possible. In all positions it is a plus to understand
Wikipedia and collaborative community processes and communities in general,
to speak English and further languages, and to appreciate the scale of a
project like Wikipedia.


The information can be found on the Web here: http://wmde.org/wikidata-jobs



Applications can be sent to and more information about the position are
available from Denny Vrandecic (denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de).

Applications for the director and manager should be sent in by November 10.
Applications for the other positions should be sent in before December 1.



Feel free to send this information to potentially interested parties.



We are looking for the following positions.



=== Project director ===

The project director has to represent and embody the vision of the project,
ensure that the final goals of the project are met, be able to motivate the
team, express it clearly in communications with the community and external
parties, take the responsibility for communicating with the donors, ensure
the necessary visibility of the project, and be able to help anyone in the
team with anything required. The director has to be fluent in spoken and
written form in both English and German, further languages are useful, be
able to demonstrate their deep understanding of community-driven projects,
feel strong about open data, open source, and their processes, have a
thorough and critical understanding of semantic technologies, and have a
record of successfully lead projects.



=== Project manager ===

The project manager has the task to remove all impediments that are blocking
the team from reaching their goals, to moderate the team and team meetings,
provide administrative support, accompany the development process, ensure
that internal project rules are upheld, and support the team whenever needed
by coaching and mediation. The project manager will pro-actively assist the
project director in their daily work, and also support the project with any
external and internal communication needs and knowledge to manage problem
solving processes. The project manager has to be fluent in spoken and
written form in both English and German, have very strong organizational and
communications skills, a high flexibility, and be able to proactively
support the team in order to keep it on track.



=== Wikimedia community communication ===

The community liaison will support the communication between the Wikidata
team and the Wikimedia communities. The person will collect the feedback of
the communities, present and represent their concerns and ideas, monitor
relevant channels, and answer them if possible, or support the Wikidata team
in their responses. A track record of their involvement with the Wikimedia
communities needs to be presented. We are looking for a person that has
earned the trust of the communities, and that will keep their loyalties not
with the Wikidata team but with the goals of the Wikimedia communities in
general. Further languages beyond English are a strong plus, especially
German due to the location of the project.



=== Quality assurance lead ===

The quality assurance lead will be responsible for unit and integration
tests, organize usability tests, ensure together with the system
administrator to have scalability tests, attack and try to breach the system
security and user privacy, and provide continuous feedback on the quality of
the implementation. We are looking for someone who loves to break things,
and enjoys being right and show others that they are not.



=== System administrator ===

The system administrator has the task to set up and maintain a realistic
development and public testing environment, in close cooperation with the
Wikimedia Foundation that will provide the Wikimedia labs environment. The
system administrator will furthermore ensure that and assist the team with
their technical needs, and manage and maintain any required software
infrastructure. The system administrator will also ensure the operation of
the live project and the seamless transition of the project maintenance and
operation to the Wikimedia Foundation.



=== 6 developers ===

We are looking for six world-class web developers that have a strong sense
for the needs of a project that has to scale to be one of the most visited
sites in the world. The project will be developed in PHP and use JavaScript
extensively. Expertise in one or more of the following topics is welcomed:
internationalization issues, browser interoperability, expressive web user
interfaces, graceful degradation, web API development, very large dataset
management, and scalable and secure web development. The development will be
based on MediaWiki, Semantic MediaWiki, and jQuery. Experience with these is
a strong plus.



[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Wikidata