Senior Software Engineer, Android (Contract)
Wikimedia Foundation
Hirezar Summary for South African Applicants
This fully remote full time position at Wikimedia Foundation is open worldwide, so South Africans can apply. As a remote position, you can work from anywhere in South Africa — whether you're based in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, or a smaller town.
Job Description
<p>The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a Senior Software Engineer, Android to support the App Experience and App Growth teams within the Core Experiences engineering group. </p>
<p>Our teams have a clear and ambitious goal: make our apps the destination for knowledge lovers and grow our active readership. </p>
<p><strong>Availability</strong></p>
<p>It’s important to state that we are a fully remote team at a global organisation. To ensure there are enough opportunities to communicate, this role needs at least four hours of your workday to occur between 15:00 UTC and 21:00 UTC.</p>
<p><strong>You are responsible for:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Delivery and enablement </strong>- Delivery of medium complexity initiatives from technical discovery through delivery. Breaks down initiatives into features, drive estimation and manage scope. Identifies risks early, and helps the team make pragmatic tradeoffs across quality, velocity, maintainability, and user impact.</li>
<li><strong>Implementation</strong> - Improving the mobile Wikipedia product experiences that serve a global, multilingual audience on Android. Leads system design for medium-sized projects and can design and build accessible, adaptable, scalable components. </li>
<li><strong>Quality, testing and observability</strong> - Consistently builds software that is easy to test, observe and debug. Instruments features that enable deeper analysis by Product Analysts. </li>
<li><strong>Cross-functional collaboration</strong> - Partners with product managers, designers, analysts, and native app engineers to shape pragmatic solutions that balance user needs, technical constraints, platform expectations, and delivery timelines.</li>
<li><strong>Prioritisation </strong>- Proactively identifies high-impact technical opportunities and risks across the engagement timeframe, works with the team to clarify priorities and sequencing. Actively keeps the team aligned on outcomes, capacity, and shared goals.</li>
<li><strong>Culture and standards</strong> - Complies with team standards in code review, technical design, testing, documentation, accessibility, observability, and decision-making - fostering transparency, empathy, and collaboration.</li>
<li><strong>Operational Awareness</strong> - Plans work with awareness of downstream or upstream effects.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Qualities that are important to us:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Clear communicator</strong> - You can explain your ideas simply and adapt your communication to different audiences across engineering, product, and non-technical audiences in both synchronous and asynchronous channels.</li>
<li><strong>Autonomy</strong> - Operates with high autonomy in a team setting and cross-team settings. You own your work end-to-end and practice a culture of responsibility and follow-through.</li>
<li><strong>Feedback</strong> - You give and receive feedback with curiosity and empathy. Helps others resolve misunderstandings productively.</li>
<li><strong>Builds strong relationships</strong> - Proactively brings the right people into discussions, identifies process improvements. </li>
<li><strong>Comfortable with ambiguity</strong> - You are comfortable with ambiguity and can collaborate to solve complex problems with pragmatic solutions. Connects ideas and can regularly balance trade-offs across related domains to create well-rounded solutions.</li>
<li><strong>Knowledge sharing</strong> - Strong knowledge-sharing practices, documents work for handover and consistently helps others understand and apply shared knowledge. You enjoy working with others to solve problems and are open to feedback. You inspire trust and progress through support, example, and thoughtful contributions.</li>
<li><strong>Outcome-oriented</strong> - You prioritise work that delivers value to users and aligns with organizational goals.You balance ideal solutions with the constraints of legacy, user expectations and delivery needs</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Requirements:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Bachelor's and 5-10+ years related professional experience with significant experience building Android applications</li>
<li>Strong professional experience and proficiency with Kotlin, XML, Jetpack Compose, and familiarity with architectural patterns in Android</li>
<li>Experience of Android performance optimisation techniques to ensure smooth, responsive, and high-performing applications under a variety of conditions.</li>
<li>Experience working in a self-driven, lean environment</li>
<li>Commitment to the Foundation's Mission and Values</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Additionally, we would love it if you have:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Experience adding webview-wrapped experiences to existing native mobile apps (iOS or Android)</li>
<li>Experience in maintaining cross-platform mobile applications.</li>
<li>Experience building mobile games or other interactive mobile experiences. </li>
<li>Experience with data science, machine
Tips for South African Applicants
Timezone Advantage
South Africa (SAST, UTC+2) overlaps well with European business hours and has a few hours of overlap with US East Coast. Mention your timezone flexibility in your application.
Salary in Context
Even without a listed salary, international remote roles typically pay 2-3x more than equivalent local positions in South Africa due to the exchange rate advantage.
Application Tips
Tailor your CV to international standards — use a clean format, highlight remote work experience, and include your English proficiency. Many SA applicants succeed by emphasising their strong work ethic and cultural adaptability.
Load Shedding Preparedness
If you're applying for a remote role, having a backup power solution (UPS, inverter, or generator) and mobile data as a backup internet connection shows employers you're prepared for South Africa's infrastructure challenges.
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About Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation is a company in the Advancement industry that hires remote workers from South Africa. They currently have 19 open positions on Hirezar. View all Wikimedia Foundation jobs →