Senior Movement Communications Specialist, Product & Tech (Contractor)

Summary

The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a Senior Movement Communications Specialist to work with product and technology teams on their collaboration with Wikimedia communities. 

The Movement Communications team is uniquely skilled at bringing people together—whether through moments to celebrate or workshops to collaborate, and while working with other departments as strategic partners and problem solvers. We work to build bridges and understanding in the movement; to help people understand our mission and celebrate their role in its success.  

The Senior Movement Communications Specialist will report to the Senior Manager or Product Ambassadors Manager on the Movement Communications Team. They will embed with the Product & Tech teams as required, working closely with their Product Manager and other staff, to craft and execute communications strategies, facilitate two-way dialog about software design and priorities, and strengthen overall trust between the Foundation and Wikimedia communities. They are involved at all stages of the product lifecycle, from bringing community perspective into product design, gathering feedback during development, supporting use and improvements during maintenance, and facilitating deprecation when needed. They tell the story of our products for a global audience, boosting use and love of Wikimedia products among Wikimedia contributors.

You are responsible for:

• Agile Comms Strategy: Craft short and medium term agile communications strategies around movement-facing Product and Technology activities in collaboration with the specialists’s manager and relevant product managers. 
• Connections: Deepen our connections to our movement of online volunteer editors through context-aware, multi-lingual and multi-cultural communications.
• Understand and Inform: Regularly meet with relevant embedded Product teams to understand project plans, designs, timelines, and challenges. Help maintain relevant FAQs, templates, newsletters, blog posts, wiki pages, and other means to address common questions efficiently.
• Movement Pulse: Monitor relevant community channels for news, incidents, and requests. Proactively respond to community questions of moderate scope about Foundation work and priorities. 
• Dialogue: Build two-way dialog between Wikimedia communities and relevant Product and Technology teams, helping teams to understand feedback and adjust product plans accordingly. This includes launching and facilitating contentious discussions with professionalism and confidence, enabling mutual understanding, clarity, and effective resolution. 
• Equity: Begin with equity and make our movement communications more inclusive by identifying and working collectively to address communication gaps among underrepresented and less vocal groups in the movement.
• Build trust: Communicate the Foundation’s movement-facing work with context to build a narrative as it relates to the Foundation’s ethos and values.
• Best Practice: Contribute to learning and knowledge exchange on best practices in Movement Communications within the team and broader Foundation.
• Support the Movement Communications team by taking up occasional assignments for other organizational priorities as per manager's indications.

Skills and Experience:

• Excellent written English and fluency with at least one other language.
• Organized, efficient, proactive, able to meet deadlines.
• Knowledge of Wikimedia communities' dynamics, cultures, and channels.
• Familiarity with the product development lifecycle and working with engineering and engineering related teams.
• Comfortable creating and leading discussions with volunteers in multiple formats, languages and cultures- such as live calls, on-wiki discussions, chat forums, and in person meetings. 
• Experience implementing successful agile communications strategies across multiple channels and platforms with collaborative outcomes.
• Emotionally mature and self-reliant; tolerates ambiguity and maintains positive, respectful professional relationships.
• Competence working in fully remote and intercultural teams, sometimes at inconvenient times of day.
• Experience of working with technical and non-technical people

Additionally, we’d love it if you have:

• Experience with advanced Wikimedia user rights (steward, checkuser, volunteer response team (VRT), admins, or other groups).
• Experience using MediaWiki software and related communication tools (on-wiki documentation, Translate exte