Software Engineering Internship Program (2027)

Software Engineering Internship Program

Location: Remote (US)*

Duration: 4 months (start in late February 2027)

Hours: 40 hrs/week paid experience

Application Deadline: All interested applicants must apply by November 20, 2026.

The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia – one of the most popular websites in the world, accessed by over 1.8 billion unique devices every month. It is the only non-profit in the top 50 websites, supported by a community of millions of individual donors around the world.

We are looking for graduates, non-graduates, or those seeking a career change who are interested in developing software engineering skills through an immersive “learn on the job” internship program. As an intern, you will be embedded into an engineering team within our Product and Technology departments and assigned a primary project with clear deliverables. Alongside your manager and dedicated mentor, you will learn the inner workings of our open source code that helps to create “a world in which everyone can freely share in the sum of all knowledge”. You will work with software that serves over half a billion page views per day through Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia projects ). The outcome of your work will impact how all people everywhere discover, share, and contribute to free knowledge.

Additionally, you will have the opportunity to learn about various departments at the Foundation and connect with the wider volunteer movement and community.

Applicants who identify from a group that is underrepresented in the global conversation of technology advancement are encouraged to apply. We’re also welcoming applicants from communities where access to free knowledge and Wikimedia projects are just emerging.

PROGRAM DETAILS

Successful candidates must be able to commit to a four month, 40hr/week internship which will fall between late February to late June 2027. We will provide laptops and necessary software installed for the duration of the program. This role is 100% remote, and in some cases there may be potential opportunities to participate in in-person events to meet other fellow interns and teams.

POTENTIAL TEAM OPPORTUNITIES

Mobile Apps Engineering Team
The Mobile Apps team's primary objective lies in constructing native Android and iOS applications for the Wikimedia Foundation.

Editing
The Editing team is part of the Contributors group. They work on tools for editing across MediaWiki, principally VisualEditor , DiscussionTools , and Edit check . The team is currently working on Suggestion Mode , a feature for the VisualEditor that proactively suggests actions that people can consider taking to improve Wikipedia articles.

Data Platform Engineering
The Mission of the Data Platform Engineering team is to empower Wiki Communities and the Wikimedia Foundation to gain insights, conduct research, and build compelling user experiences, through access to privacy-aware data and data platform services. The Data Platform is a collection of systems and services providing end-to-end capabilities for our data producers and consumers to collect, discover, and use data.

Release Engineering
The Release Engineering team enables developers to confidently build, test, and deploy code changes across Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia, by creating the tools, infrastructure, and automation that keep software delivery fast and reliable.

Connection team

The Connection team is part of the Contributors group. They aim to improve how contributors connect and understand their impact. The team was formed in 2021 to focus on the needs of campaign and event organizers and participants and hopefully improve the experience of Wikimedia campaigns .

Tools Infrastructure (with Observability )

The mission of the Tools Infrastructure team is to provide a free, reliable, secure and scalable Cloud hosting platform to support Wikimedia contributors and developers to run tools, bots, data pipelines, and services that support Wikipedia and its sister projects.

The Observability team’s mission is to provide insight into the health, performance and behaviour of production code and systems for teams within the Wikimedia Foundation and for volunteers at large.

As we form our internship cohort, we are looking for candidates who possess:

• Basic experience with at least one back end or front end programming language (e.g PHP, Javascript, Python) OR a mobile app language (Kotlin, Swift), OR a demonstrated interest in cybersecurity and/or privacy.
• Basic experience with databases.
• Basic experience with at least one scripting language.
• For some roles:
• Basic querying and data manipulation with SQL or other query languages
• Linux/command-line knowledge
• Understanding of networking, operating systems, or distributed systems concepts (latency, throughput, error rates).
• Ability to work independently and be resourceful in solving problems.
• Ability to stay accountable to deliverable …