Principal Research Scientist

We are accepting applications through March 8, 2026 and we expect a start date no later than May 18, 2026.

Summary

For a quarter-century, Wikipedia has stood as a model for the global governance of encyclopedic knowledge, a miracle of cooperation that is made possible by over 300,000 monthly volunteers who write, curate, and deliberate the free encyclopedia anyone can edit and one of the most trusted sources of knowledge in the world. As we celebrate 25 years of Wikipedia, our mission has never been more critical. 

We are witnessing a seismic shift in the information ecosystem. While the cost of content creation has decreased and the affordances of creating high quality content have significantly improved, the cost of verifiability remains very high. Synthetic content is flooding the internet, traditional operating models are being pushed to their limits, knowledge commons platforms experience significant surges to their infrastructure, trust in information online continues to decline, and consensus building is fragmenting.

We are hiring a Principal Research Scientist to join the Wikimedia Foundation’s Research team to support the Wikimedia communities and the Wikimedia Foundation in the continued evolution of Wikimedia projects and their decentralized governance model, ensuring that the projects become multigenerational.

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

• Understanding Wikipedia administrator recruitment, retention, and attrition (Learn more)
• A set of recommendations for conducting NPOV research on Wikipedia (Learn more)
• Developing a meta-method for analyzing the state of NPOV on Wikipedia (Learn more)

You can learn more about what the team has done in the past six months by reading our biannual report.

Please note: this is a fully remote role that requires working with senior leadership and stakeholders across the organization and the research community in different timezones. It is expected that the Principal Research Scientist be available for critical meetings and synchronous work between 15:00 to 19:00 UTC. It is further expected that the candidate is open to traveling up to four times per year.

You are responsible for:

• Maintaining a fluent and real-time command of the global research landscape to inform the conversations on Wikipedia quality and integrity.
• Leading a strategic research portfolio on knowledge integrity.
• Mentoring individual contributors to execute high-impact scientific projects.
• Translating complex research findings into actionable strategy and recommendations for the Head of Research, Legal, and Communications teams.
• Delivering rapid, authoritative technical vetting of external research to identify organizational risks and scientific opportunities under tight deadlines.
• Driving research advocacy and public engagement in knowledge integrity research. domain, representing the Foundation’s scientific perspective to global stakeholders and the public.
• Cultivating strategic relationships within the scientific community and standards organizations, translating Wikimedia research findings into industry-wide best practices.

Skills and Experience:

• A track record of scholarly publications and service to the research and scientific communities including but not limited to human-computer interaction and computational social science communities. 
• 3 or more years of strategic technical leadership in large matrixed organizations or their equivalent in academia, with a proven ability to counsel senior leadership. 
• Ability to distill scientific nuance into high-impact, actionable clarity for non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to manage a complex portfolio and mentor contributors while pivoting between high-level strategy and technical details.
• Advanced proficiency in AI, NLP or ML frameworks, with experience auditing algorithms for bias and accuracy OR mastery of mixed-method research specifically applied to online community governance and human system interaction.
<