Summary
The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for an enterprising product manager to join our Future Audiences effort. This is the small, fast-moving team that experiments with new ways to reach young audiences on the platforms they use. Our organizational vision is a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge – and that includes reaching new generations where they are – on search, AI, video, and social experiences.
Wikipedia is one of the most popular media properties in the world, visited by over 1 billion people a month across over 300 different languages. All this knowledge is created and managed by more than 200,000 volunteer contributors – and is becoming more important to the information ecosystem than ever before. Newer generations are using the internet in new and different ways, by searching for information in social apps, by learning from short-form videos, and incorporating AI into their daily life. This role is responsible for guiding a cross-functional team to execute on rapid experiments that unfold over a matter of weeks, in the pursuit of identifying viable product opportunities that can be scaled by other teams. Past experiments have included a Wikipedia plugin for ChatGPT and a browser extension for fact-checking.
Through working quickly and scrappily with leaders at the Foundation in the domains of Research, Machine Learning, and Communications, this role is an opportunity to shape Wikipedia's future product strategy for a new generation of readers and editors.
This role reports to the Senior Director of Product, Core Experiences, and will work closely with the Principal Product Manager for Future Audiences.
Candidates must be available for critical meetings and synchronous work between 15:00 UTC and 19:00 UTC, and are open to traveling internationally up to four times per year.
You are responsible for:
- Working with the principal product manager to prioritize and define experimental applications of Wikipedia workflows.
- Driving a small team of engineers, a designer, community specialist, and data analyst to build and deploy experiments.
- Tracking and communicating progress on experiments, and maintaining planning artifacts such as roadmaps, specs and release plans.
- Developing creative ways to measure and evaluate experiments, and conducting lightweight data analyses.
- Regularly providing meaningful and empathetic updates to communities and engaging effectively in active listening to concerns and feedback.
- Maintaining an understanding of current developments and innovations in AI and knowledge seeking.
- Seeking and filling skill gaps as you grow in your role as a product manager.
- Persevering through setbacks to ensure team goals are met, or communicating when a pivot may be necessary.
- Developing an understanding of the diversity of our movement and how it drives our work.
Skills and Experience:
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent work experience in a professional setting.
- 2+ years experience working with consumer-facing software development teams as a product manager or startup founder.
- Experience managing 0 to 1 features on quick timelines and with limited resources.
- Past success in breaking down ambiguous projects into clear tasks.
- Excellent organizational skills for team task management.
- Ability to express ideas and plans in written form.
- Ability to query and analyze data using SQL and statistical packages in Python or R.
Qualities that are important to us:
- Entrepreneurial drive.
- Self-starter who can push projects forward even when they are not well-defined.
- Scrappy and resourceful approach to learning from products quickly.
- Resilience and patience in a large and complex ecosystem of stakeholders.
- Highly organized with clear communication style.
- Share in a culture of constructive criticism and respect.
- Can identify what information is necessary vs. desired before acting.
Additionally, we'd love it if you have:
- Background as a software engineer or data scientist.
- Experience building AI products.
- Experience building products for multiple languages and geographies.
- Experience working with a fully remote globally-distributed team.
- Fluency in multiple spoken languages or dialects.
- Experience editing Wikipedia or with the Wikipedia, Wikidata, or Wikimedia Commons communities or other collaborative enterprises.
- Familiarity with MediaWiki.
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 in 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 US$86,270 to US$132,962 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.
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