**Background Information**  
  
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit charitable organization
dedicated to the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual
content, and to providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the
public free of charge. The Wikimedia Foundation operates some of the largest
collaboratively edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, a
top-ten internet property.

  
  
**Statement of Purpose**  
  
The Technical Operations team of the Wikimedia Foundation is embarking on a
new project to build a flexible and scalable lab infrastructure for our
community and volunteers, to support their effort to prototype, develop, test
and deploy their tools and extensions. Some of the uses of the Wikimedia Labs
infrastructure are for:

  

  * Deployment of volunteer-created tools which are independent of MediaWiki, e.g. edit counters, mentoring database, geographic information about articles etc. (essentially the kind of things currently running on the Toolserver)
  * Prototyping and staging of WMF-developed MediaWiki code
  * Prototyping and staging of volunteer or chapter-developed MediaWiki code
  * Development and deployment of new site architecture by staff and volunteers in a code-reviewed, devops-oriented environment
  * Access for researchers (WMF or external) to live database replication or large datasets, as well as computing resources, for the purpose of running analyses
  * Serving as an execution and hosting space for bots, so that bots can be more systematically developed and tracked
Two full-time Wikimedia Foundation operations engineers are currently building
Wikimedia Labs.

  
  
**Scope of Work**  
  
Wikimedia is looking for a contractor whose primary focus will be to assist
the community developers to migrate their tools to this new Labs
infrastructure, especially those residing in Toolserver today. In addition,
this person will:

  * Support enhancement and perform operational duties of the Labs Virtualization Project using OpenStack and LAMP-stack technology. Duties include developing, deploying and supporting tools to provision and manage large networks of virtual machines, creating a redundant and scalable cloud computing platform
  * Set up monitoring systems
  * Provide system and database administration duties for the Labs environment
  
**Outcome and Performance Standards**  
  
You are expected to work about 40 hours a week, on average. During these
(flexible) hours you are required to be available online for collaboration
with the (international) Foundation team. Outside these hours, you may
incidentally be contacted for emergencies (e.g. during system outages). You
will report to the Director of Operations, and will work closely with
Operations staff, the Engineering Community Team, and the Toolserver
community. Besides maintaining regular communication with your point of
contact, you may need to participate in bi-weekly online Operations meetings
with the rest of the team. There will be milestone check-ins with the
Foundation to discuss progress and activities. You must be willing to travel
occasionally for international meetings, as well as to perform your duties.

  
  
**Term of Contract**  
  
Your initial contract will be for a duration of 6 months, and will commence as
soon as possible. Renegotiation at the termination of the contract is
optional.

  
  
**Payments, Incentives, and Penalties**  
  
Rate will be determined by level of experience and expertise.

  
  
**Contractual Terms and Conditions and Required Qualifications**  
  
Respondent parties are expected to:

  

  * Have 5+ years of hands-on and strong knowledge of LAMP-stack system administration
  * Be competent in programming and scripting languages like PHP, Python and bash
  * Be able to work independently where needed, and work remotely as part of a globally distributed team
  * Be comfortable in a highly collaborative, consensus-oriented environment
  * Be a proficient speaker in the English language
Furthermore:

  

  * Prior work experience in creating provisioning tools is a plus
  * Prior work experience integrating different types of services together, e.g., LDAP, Puppet and MediaWiki is a plus
  * Experience with virtualization technologies such as OpenStack or Ganeti is a plus
  * Experience with clustered filesystems such as GlusterFS or Swift is a plus
  * Experience with high-traffic web site operations is a plus
  * Experience with MySQL database administration is a plus
  * Experience with the Solaris UNIX operating system and Sun Grid Engine is a plus
  * Understanding of the free culture movement, especially Wikimedia, is a plus
The ideal candidate will be creative, highly motivated, and able to operate
effectively in multiple cultural contexts.

  
Candidates do not have to live in the San Francisco Bay Area or the USA;
remote candidates are welcome.



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