Research Scientist

Remote Please note: While this is a fully remote role, candidates must be located within the UTC+3 to UTC−8 time zones due to team collaboration requirements. We’re hiring a Research Scientist strongly committed to the principles of free knowledge, open source, privacy, and collaboration to join the Research team. As a Research Scientist, you will conduct applied research on the integrity of Wikipedia knowledge, its communities and their work, and the Wikipedia model. We’re accepting applications through 15 January 2026, with a start date by or before April 2026. You will join an interdisciplinary team of Research Scientists, Research Engineers, UX Researchers, Survey Specialists and Research Operations Officers. You’ll work remotely with team members spread between Europe, North America and the Middle East. Examples of recent research questions you may contribute to include::

How does the platform and its community navigate election times? (more)
What is the role of Wikipedia in the landscape of online disinformation? (more)
What guidance can we provide to researchers studying neutrality on Wikipedia? (more)

You can learn more about what the team has done in the past six months by reading our biannual report. Note: This role reports to the Applied Science Manager and requires working in different timezones with availability for critical meetings and synchronous work between 15:00 to 19:00 UTC. The role may require occasional participation in incident response activities outside of the candidates' standard working hours, including evenings or weekends. The role also includes the expectation of travel up to four times per year. You will be responsible for:

Contributing groundbreaking research with a particular focus on Wikipedia’s core content policies, the integrity of its knowledge and communities, and the resilience of its model.
Discovering, reading, and evaluating existing research and press coverage on Wikipedia content and its core content policies
Conducting flawless analyses and coordinating work with peers in Research, Communications, Legal, Trust and Safety, and Security in response to incidents
Designing and executing thorough experiments to collect, clean, and analyze data, and/or to develop and evaluate machine learning models
Discussing, documenting, and communicating the process and results of your research publicly
Engaging with the global community of Wikimedia researchers to socialize the team’s work and raise awareness about relevant research questions
Actively engaging in a collaborative, consensus-oriented environment as part of a globally-distributed team and organization
Providing research consulting to the teams in the Wikimedia Foundation, affiliates, and the Wikimedia volunteers

Skills and experience:

PhD degree in computer science, information science, statistics, or a related technical field
Demonstrated ability to work on problems with both social and technical components in mixed method settings. Experience with knowledge integrity research is highly preferred.
Proficiency in Python for data analysis, manipulation, and machine learning model development.
Experience with Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing tools.
Understanding of Large Language Models and their applications in research.
Ability to assess the scientific rigor of empirical research publications studying online communities.
Contributions to research communities, including a strong record of scholarly publications and experience serving on program committees for relevant conferences and journals.
Strong written and verbal communication skills in English, including the ability to communicate complex technical issues to a cross-team and cross-functional audience

Additionally, we’d love it if you have:

Deep knowledge of the Wikimedia ecosystem and how its projects operate
Experience with volunteer or open source communities
Experience with the Hadoop ecosystem, and analytical tools such as Hive or Spark.
Experience working in large, matrixed organizations

Qualities that are important to us:

Commitment to our mission, values, and guiding principles
Ability to effectively and responsibly communicate and actively listen
Ability to analyze tradeoffs between velocity and rigor of research projects
Self-motivated and proactive
Curiosity and commitment to learn
Comfortable with working in the open and public exposure in multicultural and transparent environments
Poised and effective in the face of changing requirements or senior leadership interactions.

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that 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,...