Site Reliability Engineer III

Summary

Wikimedia Foundation is hiring a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) to join our SRE team, where we take care of the infrastructure that runs wikipedia.org and other Wikimedia Foundation projects. We are responsible for the entire infrastructure stack, from multiple data centers, through networking and interconnects, to 1000s of servers and the application stack that runs on them.

We are a distributed and diverse team of engineers with a drive to explore, experiment and embrace new technologies. We are along the path of transitioning our platform from a monolith to a hybrid microservices architecture and have implemented these microservices on our on-premises Kubernetes platform with an in-house designed deployment pipeline. We’ve adopted the Elastic Stack and Prometheus as our de facto logging and monitoring platforms. We automate the operational tasks with a mix of technologies, mainly Python and Puppet. We ensure the availability and reliability of one of the most used sites on the Internet, and develop the software we need to achieve these goals - for example our automation platform “spicerack” (https://github.com/wikimedia/operations-software-spicerack) which we use to develop cookbooks for repeatable tasks (we ❤️ automation).

We work in the open and document our work on our internal task management system (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org) and our technical wiki (https://wikitech.wikimedia.org). Feel free to check out our activities there.

We are avid supporters of open source software. If you have interesting open source contributions, let us know!

If you find what we do interesting and you enjoy the idea of working with a globally distributed team that runs a Top-15 website, we may be the place you’re looking for.

As an engineer in the SRE team you will be involved in defining and running the infrastructure and services that form the base of Wikimedia Foundation projects. This will include frequent work with other members of the SRE team to improve our infrastructure in terms of scalability, high availability, recoverability, monitoring and logging. You will participate in incident response and be oncall. You will also be frequently interacting with people not in SRE, like Security, Release and Software Engineers, who all strive to maintain and make Mediawiki and related software better. 

We use more technologies than we can list here and are interested in your experience even if it doesn’t exactly match the keywords above / below.

You are responsible for:

• Implementation and maintenance of Internet facing infrastructure and services
• Use of configuration management and deployment tools
• Monitoring of systems and services, optimization of performance and resource utilization
• Common operating system level tasks such as logging and backup / restore
• Cookbook / runbook implementation for common maintenance actions
• Incident response, diagnosis and follow-up on system outages or alerts
• Collaborating with a global and asynchronously communicating team (don’t worry if you have never worked remotely, we’ll help you get used to it)

Skills and Experience:

Qualities that are important to us:

• 2+ years experience in an SRE/Operations/DevOps role
• Experience with operating highly available infrastructure
• Comfortable with shell and a programming language used in an SRE/Operations engineering context (Python, Go, Ruby, etc.)
• Experience with package management for operating systems (Debian, etc)
• Comfortable with Open Source configuration management and orchestration tools (Puppet, Ansible, TerraForm etc.)
• Past exposure to automation and streamlining of tasks
• Communicative technical English

Additionally, we’d love it if you have:

• A history of contributing to Open Source projects
• Prior participation in the Wikimedia movement

The Wikimedia Foundation is... 

...the nonprofit organization that hosts and 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, free of interference. We host 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 financial support 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 (415) 839-6885.

U.S. Benefits & Perks*

• Fully paid medical, dental and vision coverage for employees and their eligible families (yes, fully paid premiums!)
• The Wellness Program provides reimbursement for mind, body and soul activities such as fitness memberships, baby sitting, continuing education and much more
• The 401(k) retirement plan offers matched contributions at 4% of annual salary
• Flexible and generous time off - vacation, sick and volunteer days, plus 22 paid holidays - including the last week of the year.
• Family friendly! 100% paid new parent leave for seven weeks plus an additional five weeks for pregnancy, flexible options to phase back in after leave, fully equipped lactation room.
• For those emergency moments - long and short term disability, life insurance (2x salary) and an employee assistance program
• Pre-tax savings plans for health care, child care, elder care, public transportation and parking expenses
• Telecommuting and flexible work schedules available
• Appropriate fuel for thinking and coding (aka, a pantry full of treats) and monthly massages to help staff relax
• Great colleagues - diverse staff and contractors speaking dozens of languages from around the world, fantastic intellectual discourse, mission-driven and intensely passionate people

*Please note that for remote roles located outside of the U.S., we defer to our PEO to ensure alignment with local labor laws.