Ubuntu 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.

We are hiring engineering leaders to work across the breadth of our Ubuntu Engineering organization - leaders who care deeply for quality, performance and resilience in software, and have a proven track record for building, nurturing and developing high performing engineering teams.

This leadership track includes roles for Managers and Senior Managers . At Canonical, managers are expected to stay technical and close to the code as well as the processes and people around them.

Our teams integrate the freshest open source software, provide robust upgrade paths and engineer the future of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is not just the world’s most deployed open source operating system, it's a platform that enables innovation for millions of users across the globe. Our community represents the full breadth of the developer experience; from students, hobbyists and freelancers to high performance engineering and creative teams in corporate and academic environments.

The four key teams that ship Ubuntu are the

Foundations : maintaining foundational software: architectures, package managers, compilers, toolchains, bootloaders, filesystems and core utilities

Server: leading the design, evolution and future of our Ubuntu Server distribution

Desktop: driving Ubuntu Desktop, our future immutable desktop: Ubuntu Core Desktop, WSL, gaming technology, and a suite of modern applications for the desktop crafted with Flutter

Debcrafters: a new team responsible for the forward movement, maintenance and overall health of the Ubuntu archive: one of the most abundant repositories of open source software available today

You'll be accountable for your technical roadmap, and responsible for your team: helping them grow as engineers, do important and satisfying work, and have a great time while doing it. 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

At Canonical, you will have the opportunity to engage with and contribute to the broader open source community. We're looking for individuals who can help build a thriving community and contribute with enthusiasm and precision to a broad range of technologies

Location : We have remote roles open in every time zone.

The role entails

Based on the first round of interviews, we identify specific teams where you might be an excellent fit and conduct second-round interviews with those teams. Our leads are:

Leading their teams in elevating the Linux developer and user experience

Designing, building and shipping high quality, performant software in Rust, Go and Python

Demonstrating sound engineering principles through architecture, development and code reviews

Taking responsibility for planning, estimation and execution

Working with product management to define the vision and strategy for Ubuntu

Setting expectations with other engineering teams, senior management, and external stakeholders

Offering coaching, mentoring, technical feedback and hands-on career development

Contributing to upstream and neighboring open source projects

Authoring and improving technical and community documentation