Canonical: Software Engineering Manager (Backend SaaS)

Canonical is a leading provider of open source software and operating systems to the global enterprise and technology markets. Our platform, Ubuntu, is very widely used in breakthrough enterprise initiatives such as public cloud, data science, AI, engineering innovation, and IoT. Our customers include the world’s leading public cloud and silicon providers, and industry leaders in many sectors. The company is a pioneer of global distributed collaboration, with 1200+ colleagues in 75+ countries and very few office-based roles. Teams meet two to four times yearly in person, in interesting locations around the world, to align on strategy and execution.

The company is founder-led, profitable, and growing.

We are hiring an engineering manager to lead the reboot of our Landscape systems management solution for Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is growing rapidly in the enterprise, with estates expanding from cloud, to bare metal servers, to vSphere clusters, and of course desktops and devices. Ubuntu is easy to deploy and configure, one node at a time, but it’s difficult to know where you stand on policy and compliance, patch management, or access control across a large estate. Ubuntu used to be under the radar in the enterprise, but it is now becoming an official platform for many companies. Those enterprises very much want a high quality way to manage their Ubuntu estate.

We started work on Landscape many years ago, and the current generation of the service reflects the choices of the day. We now have the opportunity to invest significantly in a team to bring a fresh new vision for large-scale Ubuntu estate management to the project. That doesn’t make this a greenfield opportunity – we have a system that serves thousands of deployments – but we know we want to step back and give it a big new push, letting go of some things that are no longer so important, and embracing a range of new priorities. This role is the critical engineering leadership role for that mission.

Today we use Python, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, HAProxy, and have a ReactJS front end. In other web services projects we use more Golang these days. Our next wave of Landscape engineering is an opportunity to raise the bar on SAAS and on-prem solution technologies, architectures, patterns and operations. Our goal is to make it easy for enterprises to own a few Landscape instances that serve their global estate, and to be able to apply policy and know intuitively where they stand – globally – in a very complex world of mixed Ubuntu versions, substrates and flavours.

Engineering managers at Canonical bring both technical and management skills to the leadership of their teams. You will work closely with product managers, and produce an engineering roadmap with ambitious and achievable goals. A successful applicant will be capable of growing a team of engineers, collaborating with other engineering and business teams at Canonical, and providing periodic updates about successes and areas of improvement.

As an engineering manager at Canonical you must be technically strong, but your responsibility is to run an effective team and develop the colleagues you manage. You are expected to help them grow as engineers, do important work, do it outstandingly well, find professional and personal satisfaction, and work well with colleagues and community. Technical leadership experience and a background in software engineering are necessary prerequisites for this role. You will be expected to lead, challenge, and develop strong engineers, positively influence the culture, facilitate technical delivery, and work with your team on strategy and execution.

We work in Python and Golang, and expect engineering managers to be fluent in the language, architecture and components that their team uses. Code reviews and architectural leadership are part of the job. As manager, the commitment to healthy engineering practices, documentation, quality and performance optimisation are equally important technical responsibilities, as is the requirement for fair and clear management, and the obligation to ensure a high performing team.

Key responsibilities

• Build and lead a team of engineers in your region
• Develop talent through coaching, mentoring, feedback, and hands-on career development
• Demonstrate sound engineering principles and directly contribute toward your team’s goals
• Set and manage expectations with other engineering teams, management, and external stakeholders
• Lead modern, agile software development practices
• Ensure a healthy, collaborative engineering culture in line with the company values
• Be an active part of the leadership team and collaborate with other leaders in the organisation
• Build automated, highly reliable image delivery, testing and publication pipelines
• Engage with many other teams at Canonical, as well as the open source community and commercial partners
• Work from home with global travel 4-6 weeks per year for internal and external events

Valued skills and experience

• You love to mentor, develop and grow people, and have a track record of doing it
• You are knowledgeable and passionate about software development
• You are focused on success and the delivery of timely, high quality software
• You have experience and commitment to agile development methodologies
• You have a Bachelor’s or equivalent in Computer Science, STEM or similar degree
• Software development experience in Python or Golang
• Effective written and verbal communication skills
• Practical experience with Linux system administration

What we offer colleagues

We consider geographical location, experience, and performance in shaping compensation worldwide. We revisit compensation annually (and more often for graduates and associates) to ensure we recognize outstanding performance. In addition to base pay, we offer a performance-driven annual bonus or commission. We provide all team members with additional benefits which reflect our values and ideals. We balance our programs to meet local needs and ensure fairness globally.

• Distributed work environment with twice-yearly team sprints in person
• Personal learning and development budget of USD 2,000 per year
• Annual compensation review
• Recognition rewards
• Annual holiday leave
• Maternity and paternity leave
• Team Member Assistance Program & Wellness Platform
• Opportunity to travel to new locations to meet colleagues
• Priority Pass and travel upgrades for long-haul company events

About Canonical

Canonical is a pioneering tech firm at the forefront of the global move to open source. As the company that publishes Ubuntu, one of the most important open-source projects and the platform for AI, IoT, and the cloud, we are changing the world of software. We recruit on a global basis and set a very high standard for people joining the company. We expect excellence; in order to succeed, we need to be the best at what we do. Most colleagues at Canonical have worked from home since our inception in 2004.​ Working here is a step into the future and will challenge you to think differently, work smarter, learn new skills, and raise your game.

Canonical is an equal opportunity employer

We are proud to foster a workplace free from discrimination. Diversity of experience, perspectives, and background create a better work environment and better products. Whatever your identity, we will give your application fair consideration.

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