Job Opportunity for Research Manager at Wikimedia Foundation

Summary

We’re hiring a Research Manager strongly committed to the principles of free knowledge, open source and open data, transparency, privacy, and collaboration to join the Research team. As our Research Manager you will be leading a small, highly talented, and ambitious team of research scientists and research engineers to develop models and insights that support the technology and policy needs of the Wikimedia projects across more than 300 languages, and to advance our understanding of the Wikimedia projects.

You’ll work remotely with the fully distributed Research team, with members currently spread between UTC+3 and UTC-7. You will be accountable for our Knowledge Integrity program which is a highly interdisciplinary program with many stakeholders inside and outside of the Wikimedia Foundation. Within the Foundation, you will work closely with ML Platform, Data Engineering and Event Platform, Legal (Global Advocacy, Trust & Safety), and Product (Moderator tools, Anti-Harassment Tools) teams and more. Outside of the Wikimedia Foundation, you will work with the Wikimedia developers behind bots that operate on the Wikimedia projects, Wikimedia researchers, and Wikimedia affiliates and user groups to understand, translate and prioritize their needs as part of the work of your team.

Here are some things we’ve worked on recently that might give you a better sense of the scope of work you will be accountable for and part of:

• We built a multi-dimensional risk observatory to monitor and compare knowledge integrity risks across more than 300 Wikipedia language editions.
• We built machine learning models (now in Production) to support patrolling tasks on Wikipedia and Wikidata. (research, code)
• We developed a pipeline to compute and publish content gap metrics to help the Foundation address knowledge gaps.
• We developed Production level data pipelines to generate article features and article quality scores for ML models.
• We published research on reference quality in WWW’23 (paper,video) and multilingual vandalism detection in KDD’23 (paper). 
• We gave talks or participated in panels as part of Korean AI-Summit, the International Science Council, the Creative Commons Seminars, and beyond speaking to the role of Wikipedia on the online information ecosystem.
• If you are interested to learn more about all aspects of the work of the Research team, we encourage you to read our bi-annual Research Report.

You are responsible for:

• Managing a globally distributed team of research scientists and research engineers in the Research team
• Creating a team environment where team members feel motivated and inspired
• Recruiting, hiring, and onboarding new team members and contractors
• Working with team members to set individual performance goals, and supporting them in meeting and evolving their goals and career paths
• Developing or updating the roadmap of the team in alignment with the organization’s strategic direction, and drafting and executing the team’s annual and quarterly commitments
• Leading the definition, refinement, and execution of the processes through which the team manages and performs work
• Triaging incoming workload, maintaining focus on priorities, and setting realistic expectations with stakeholders and team members
• Representing the Research team and the Wikimedia Foundation in the scientific communities through giving invited talks or keynotes, participating in panels, organizing research events or service activities including but not limited to (senior) program committee, track chair or program chair roles.

Skills and Experience:

• 3+ years of experience managing and leading Data Science or Research teams that have brought research ideas to live product or features
• Hands-on experience with scientific research including scientific publishing
• Demonstrated ability to start a multi-stakeholder program or roadmap, navigate trade-offs and successfully bring it to completion
• Strong written and oral communication skills in English, including the ability to communicate complex technical issues to a cross-team and cross-functional audience
• Experience facilitating meetings or convenings of participants with diverse expertise for decision making
• Hands-on experience bringing a research idea to a live product or feature
• PhD or MSc degree plus related work experience in computer science, statistics, or related technical fields; PhD degree preferred

Qualities that are important to us:

• Committed to the mission of the organization and our values
• Committed to our guiding principles and human rights policy
• Empathetic towards and committed to work with the Wikimedia affiliates and communities
• Able to disagree in a respectful manner and work towards a solution even when you disagree
• Good at asynchronous communication 
• Solution-focused. The Wikimedia ecosystem is complex, resources are limited, and our goals and guiding principles are ambitious. We want you to work with your team to find solutions embracing these factors.
• An effective and responsible communicator. An active listener.
• Self motivated and proactive
• Able to manage and lead in the face of ambiguity and complexity
• Curious and committed to learn

Additionally, we’d love it if you have one or more of the following:

• 3+ years of experience managing remote teams
• Experience contributing to Wikimedia projects
• Experience working in NGO, non-profit, or social good oriented organizations
• Experience working with volunteer communities and projects
• Experience managing teams that include engineers
• Experience conducting research in misinformation, disinformation or the integrity of knowledge
• Published research in the past three years
• Contributed to scientific communities through service activities in the past three years