Site Reliability Engineer

Summary

We are looking for a Site Reliability Engineer to join our SRE Traffic team in supporting and developing the platform that serves the world’s favorite encyclopedia to millions of people around the globe. Wikipedia and its sister projects are powered by Free and Open Source software and infrastructure. The SRE Traffic team’s primary responsibility is the development and operation of a private and privacy-protecting global CDN for Wikipedia and related sister projects.

Our Traffic stack handles public DNS, global request routing, TLS termination, HTTP content caching, and internal service routing for the public services the Foundation operates. It acts as the edge layer between the wild public Internet and all of our internal software and infrastructure, handling ~12 billion encrypted HTTP requests per day, or ~140,000 per second on average, from edge server sites in California, Texas, and Virginia in the US, and the Netherlands and Singapore abroad. We currently employ Varnish and Apache Traffic Server for the most complex HTTP caching, manipulation, and request-routing parts of our stack.

We are a globally distributed and diverse team of engineers with a drive to explore, experiment and embrace new technologies. If you find what we do interesting, if you are up to the challenge of improving the reliability and delivery of one of the Internet’s top 10 websites, and you enjoy the idea of working in a remote-first role, we may just be the right place for you.

You are responsible for:

• Operating and helping to improve the design of the CDN edge of Wikimedia’s infrastructure
• Responding to common traffic issues following documented procedures
• Performing day-to-day operational tasks on Wikimedia’s public facing infrastructure (deployment, maintenance, configuration, troubleshooting)
• Utilizing configuration management and deployment tools
• Monitoring systems and services
• Assisting with incident response, diagnosis, and follow-up on system outages or alerts across Wikimedia’s production infrastructure
• Sharing our values and working in accordance with them

Skills and Experience:

• Some experience working as part of an SRE/Operations/DevOps team, or similar
• A working knowledge of the core protocols of the Internet, especially TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, and TLS
• Operational experience with one or more open source HTTP server and/or proxy softwares (such as Apache, Nginx, Haproxy, Envoy, Varnish, ATS, etc) running on a Linux server platform.
• B.S. in Computer Science or equivalent work experience

Qualities that are important to us:

• Some programming and/or scripting experience solving real problems in any language
• Strong English language skills and ability to work effectively and often asynchronously as part of a globally distributed team

Additionally, we’d love it if you have:

• Familiarity with the debugging and performance tracing of HTTP requests through various proxy/caching layers
• Familiarity with global Internet infrastructure and routing
• Comfort with shell and scripting languages used in an SRE/Operations engineering context (Python, Go, Bash, Ruby, etc.)
• Low level systems troubleshooting and debugging skills
• Prior experience contributing to Free and Open Source software projects or communities in any capacity

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 [email protected] 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.

More information

Wikimedia Foundation
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Wikimedia 2030
Wikimedia Medium Term Plan
Our Commitment to Equity
This is Wikimedia Foundation
Facts Matter
Our Projects
Our Tech Stack