Senior Project Manager (Communications)

Summary

The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a Senior Project Manager to join the Communications department, reporting to the Manager of Program Management. 

We are looking for an experienced project manager who is a systems thinker—someone who listens closely and well, who understands the importance of being a thought partner to a project team as well as a mediator. If you excel at working with a range of creative teams to identify possible solutions, know how to celebrate team accomplishments, and help to negotiate through differences in order to find perfect team alignment on goals, then this job is for you!

Wikimedia wants to change the world and we have been doing just that for the last 20+ years. As the Foundation and the Communications department have grown, we have flexed our creative muscles and become much more comfortable with increasingly complex, global projects. 

As a Senior Project Manager in the Communications department, you will join a small team who manages any number of Communications department projects, liaise regularly with and across several creative teams, and act as a strategic partner to each of the four teams in the Communications department: External Comms, Internal Comms, Movement Comms, and Brand Studio. You will work alongside a range of brand strategists, copywriters, designers, researchers, marketers, PR & media specialists and movement communications specialists. 

Our work often involves collaboration with different departments across the Foundation with varying degrees of inter/dependencies. Part of your role will be to manage project plans, define schedules, lead meetings, track progress, schedule and facilitate cross-team and cross-departmental projects, support our collective work, and help us to explore possible futures. 

This is a remote position working with individuals and teams in the USA, the UK, Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Candidates must be in timezones UTC-5 to UTC- 00.

You are responsible for:

• Creating project roadmaps, negotiating project scopes, identifying stakeholders, scheduling regular project meetings, creating shared understandings of projects by identifying and clearly communicating roadblocks, challenges, and dependencies 
• Documenting work to identify best practices so projects progress to dependable, successful, on-time completion 
• Tracking and reporting relevant qualitative and quantitative metrics
• Triaging incoming work requests, tracking the progress of requested work
• Inspiring trust while driving multiple projects to completion
• Supporting healthy team dynamics and a culture that welcomes diverse perspectives
• Ensuring individuals and teams understand their commitments to goals and to each other; upholding a culture of belonging and accountability
• Reinforcing the power and importance of attempting challenging work that may fail 

Skills and Experience:

• 6+ years of experience working as a project manager, preferably with creative teams
• Strong project management skills: prioritization, organization, planning, time management, stakeholder management, facilitation, problem solving, and decision-making
• 2+ years of experience working remotely on a distributed team
• Ability to build rapport and influence with distributed teams representing various cultures and time zones with different communication styles
• Ability to anticipate risks, resolve conflicts, and initiate escalation paths
• Ability to build relationships and trust, influence without authority, and effectively enforce accountability
• Strong interpersonal communications skills
• Works well with ambiguity
• Experience using project management software (we use Asana)

Qualities that are important to us:

• Mission driven—you believe in the power of inclusive communication and movement building to make free knowledge accessible to everyone. 
• Openness and curiosity—we work on new and interesting problems in complex, public and collaborative ways.
• Resilience—Working together for outcomes, willingness to change course when warranted and motivated by high standards.
• Positivity—Sharing a culture of encouragement and respect.
• Team-oriented—Natural inclination for team collaboration and for helping colleagues succeed 
• Intentionally inclusive—Strong personal values related to participation, equity, and diversity in global movements
• Creativity—An appreciation of creative mentalities linked with an understanding of creative approaches that may involve risk 

Additionally, we’d like it if you have:

• Experience working in an international organization that has a distributed workforce 
• Experience working within a movement with strong culture and values
• An understanding of the value of neurodiversity
• Fluency in languages in addition to English
• A desire for your work to be world-changing
• Non-profit experience

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.

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.

More information

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