Location: Remote (Global)
Team: Site Reliability Engineering
Type: Full-Time
Organization: Wikimedia Foundation
đ About the Role
Weâre looking for a Senior Database Administrator (DBA) to help steward the infrastructure that powers Wikipedia and its sister projectsâsites visited by hundreds of millions each month. This is more than just uptime; itâs the mission to preserve and distribute the sum of all human knowledge, at scale.
Youâll join a tight-knit team of experienced DBAs and engineers who maintain and evolve one of the most visible and impactful platforms on the internet. At the core of it all: MariaDB, open-source tools, and bare-metal Linux hosts across global data centers.
This is your opportunity to make an outsized impactâtechnically and sociallyâby helping Wikimedia stay fast, resilient, and free.
đ§ What Youâll Do
- Own and manage MariaDB infrastructure powering Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects
- Implement, maintain, and troubleshoot complex replication topologies across multiple datacenters
- Run performance tuning, schema optimization, and version upgrades
- Manage backups, failovers, monitoring, observability, and high availability setups
- Collaborate with engineering and SRE teams to scale infrastructure and enhance reliability
- Support incident response rotations and actively improve recovery protocols
- Contribute to open source and help evolve database best practices for a global nonprofit
- Use your voice and skills to advocate for open, transparent systems that support freedom of information
đ§ What You Bring
- 5+ years of hands-on DBA experience in high-traffic, mission-critical environments
- Advanced expertise with MariaDB or MySQLâincluding replication and HA tools
- Solid understanding of Linux internals, storage I/O, and systems debugging
- Proven track record in query performance tuning and schema design
- Comfort managing bare-metal infrastructure remotely
- Proficiency in SQL and production troubleshooting
- Ability to work independently in a distributed, asynchronous team
- Strong written and spoken English communication skills
⨠Bonus Points For
- Strong automation/scripting chops (Python, Bash, etc.)
- Experience with MediaWiki, PHP/HHVM, Memcached, Redis, or similar LAMP-stack tools
- Familiarity with Ceph, Cassandra, or Swift
- Open-source contributions or community participation
- Background in architecture/design of distributed systems
đĄ Why This Role Matters
Wikipedia and its sibling projects are free, ad-free, and open to all. We donât harvest data. We donât sell attention. We serve truth, access, and knowledge to the world. Your work here wonât pad a shareholderâs portfolioâit will shape how generations learn and connect.
đą What We Offer
- Fully remote role (with up to 2 trips/year for team meetups or events)
- Work with some of the smartest engineers in global open-source infrastructure
- A mission that mattersâserving hundreds of millions of users
- Competitive, equitable salary based on your location and experience
â Anticipated range (U.S.): $109,047 â $169,455/year - Excellent benefits, including:
- Generous PTO and paid holidays
- Comprehensive health coverage
- 401(k) / Retirement plans
- Professional development support
- Family-friendly policies
- A workplace that values diversity, inclusion, and respect
đ About the Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit behind Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and dozens of other free knowledge projects. Our vision is simple yet bold: a world in which every single person can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.
We operate one of the most visited websites in the world with one of the smallest engineering teamsâpowered by passion, purpose, and open-source ideals.
âď¸ Apply Now
If youâre ready to help shape the internetâs most important free resource, we want to hear from you.