Senior Database Administrator

Senior Database Administrator (Remote)

The Wikimedia Foundation seeks a Senior Database Administrator (DBA) to maintain and enhance its MariaDB systems, which underpin platforms like Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. This is a unique opportunity to impact billions of users by managing large-scale, globally distributed database systems.

Responsibilities

• Database Management:
  • Implement, maintain, and troubleshoot relational database systems in production and staging environments.
  • Handle database version upgrades, testing, and collaborating with upstream for bug fixes.
• Optimization and Performance:
  • Configure replication, design schema optimizations, and manage schema changes.
  • Debug and improve query performance.
• Monitoring and Planning:
  • Enhance observability (alerting, metrics, monitoring) of database infrastructure.
  • Design replication topology and manage capacity and infrastructure planning.
• Incident Response:
  • Participate in diagnosing and resolving outages or system alerts.
  • Share insights and follow-ups on incidents.
• Collaboration:
  • Work with a distributed team using asynchronous communication tools.
  • Partner with engineers to design robust and efficient database systems.

Qualifications

Required:

• Database Expertise:
  • Advanced experience with MariaDB/MySQL administration, including replication topologies at scale.
  • Strong SQL proficiency and query performance debugging.
  • Experience with MySQL high availability and replication tools.
• Infrastructure Knowledge:
  • Solid understanding of Linux, IO/data storage concepts, and troubleshooting.
  • Experience managing bare-metal servers and virtualized environments remotely.
• Professional Experience:
  • 5+ years in a DBA role with exposure to high-traffic, highly available websites.
  • Experience maintaining database systems in globally distributed setups.
• Education:
  • B.Sc. or M.Sc. in Computer Science or equivalent work experience.
• Other Skills:
  • Strong English language skills.
  • Ability to work independently in a fast-paced, remote-first environment.

Optional:

• Technical Proficiency:
  • Programming/scripting skills for automation.
  • Familiarity with LAMP stack (PHP/HHVM, memcached/Redis).
  • Exposure to advanced distributed storage systems like Swift, Ceph, or Cassandra.
• Community Contributions:
  • Open-source contributions or strong track record in collaborative software development.
• Architecture Experience:
  • Designing persistent data storage and query infrastructure.

Why Join Wikimedia Foundation?

• Impact: Your work supports the world’s largest open knowledge repository.
• Remote-First: Work from anywhere among a diverse, global team.
• Compensation: Competitive pay adjusted to your location:
  • US Pay Range: $109,047 to $169,455 annually.
  • International ranges adjusted by location.
• Inclusivity: Open, diverse, and equitable workplace valuing every team member.

How to Apply

For assistance or accommodations, contact recruiting@wikimedia.org or call +1 (415) 839-6885.

Join us in empowering the world with free knowledge!