Engineering Manager

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.

This is a general track for first-level engineering management positions at Canonical.

We believe that open source is just starting to transform the tech sector and enterprise compute. Our goal is to make open source easier, more reliable, and more secure for deployment and development. We strive to be the provider of ‘most software to most companies’. To deliver on that ambition, our engineers are carefully selected from the applicants across the globe. We select for brilliance and motivation to take open source to the next level. Our engineering managers help teams achieve more than they realised they could, and feel proud of the result.

We believe that Engineering Managers should be outstanding developers themselves. They should be completely at home reviewing a patch or a software design spec. They are trusted engineers who understand the importance of a whole-team effort in creating great products and who enjoy seeing colleagues develop. They should contribute code themselves to set the standard for coding, but know that the code they write is far less significant than their ability to shape the whole team’s direction, focus, and delivery. We grow management skills and train engineers who are interested in soft skills to be managers.

A typical first-level software engineering team is based in a single time zone, such as EMEA or Americas, or APAC, with an Engineering Manager and a Senior Engineer dedicated to a single product, who work as a team to shape the roadmap, technical strategy, code, documentation, and community engagement. They are both capable of coding, and are both leaders comfortable assigning work and maintaining expectations of delivery. They will both be expected to take management training at Canonical so they speak the same language when it comes to team behaviours, habits, routines, norms, and standards, but they focus on different sides of the problem.

An Engineering Manager is responsible for line management and career guidance. The ability to develop engineering talent, to represent your team and product from a technical perspective, and to drive collaboration with other teams and customers are all critical to success in this role.

We have open manager roles across a wide range of engineering domains, including:

Python and Golang

C / C++ / Rust

Data infrastructure

HTML / CSS / JavaScript / Typescript / React

Flutter

Distro packaging and systems

SAAS and web microservices

Kernel

Servers

Graphics, Browser and Desktop

Silicon enablement and embedded devices

Product Security

If your domain of expertise isn’t listed above, yet you feel it’s relevant to Canonical, then feel free to apply anyway. We will route you to the most suitable team.

Location: we have engineering management positions open in every time zone

What you’ll do

Lead and develop a team of engineers, ranging from graduate to senior