Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects. They are seeking a Legal Counsel to provide legal advice to product, engineering, and design teams on matters related to feature development, product changes, and privacy issues.
Responsibilities
- Advising product, engineering and design teams on legal issues related to feature development, launches, experiments and ongoing platform operations
- Supporting legal review of new products, product changes, and technical initiatives around the Wikimedia projects
- Supporting the draft, review and maintenance of user-facing terms, disclosures, policies, FAQs and internal guidance
- Counseling on product, privacy, data use, consumer protection, intellectual property, accessibility, online safety and related product issues
- Partnering with cross-functional teams to identify legal risk early and develop practical, mission-aligned solutions
- Monitoring and helping assess legal and regulatory developments that may affect Wikimedia’s projects globally
Skills
- J.D. from accredited U.S. law school or equivalent foreign degree, and admission to practice law in that jurisdiction
- 2-5 years experience with legal review of technical products or online services
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills and attention to detail, full fluency in written and spoken English
- Dedicated, hardworking, passionate, and able to complete projects independently
- Ability to learn on the job, spot issues, think fast, and comfortably deal with complex and ambiguous issues with sound judgment
- Comfortable in a highly collaborative, multicultural, transparent environment
- Ability to assess and manage complex risks, and triage issues appropriately
- Mission-driven with a public service orientation and high personal integrity
- An understanding of, and commitment to, a free and open internet, to the open source and free culture movements, and to Wikimedia's mission
- Experience with open source, free culture, free software, or online communities
- A degree in computer science, engineering, or related experience, and have a good understanding of software engineering processes and issues
- Experience with public policy, government relations or other policy-facing functions
- Ability to speak other languages, experience living or working outside the United States, or past work on international legal issues are a major plus
Company Overview
Wikimedia Foundation encourages the development and distribution of free educational content with projects such as Wikipedia. It was founded in 2003, and is headquartered in San Francisco, California, USA, with a workforce of 501-1000 employees. Its website is http://wikimediafoundation.org.