Jobs at Canonical

• We are hiring a Director, Ubuntu Desktop Engineering to lead our mission to deliver the world's best open source desktop experience and developer platform, for consumers, professionals and developers. This is a director-level position, responsible for the integrated strategy, architecture and roadmap across multiple engineering teams working in Rust, C/C++, Flutter and Golang. We are looking for a technical leader with a deep understanding of Linux graphics technology, system architecture and security capability. We are also looking for a leader who has a personal interest in user experience, performance engineering, and consumer applications across form factors such as tablets, mobile, the desktop, and remote computing environments like VDI.
• We focus on delivering the cleanest, simplest, most reliable out-of-the-box experience for Linux on any laptop or workstation. We make careful choices to select best of breed components for the entire desktop and developer experience, and we invest in packaging and integration. We are also now looking to build new desktop capabilities, with a focus on performance, resource efficiency, media codecs and user experience. We are seeking a director of engineering with outstanding leadership and management qualities, as well as a clear vision for the future of the open source desktop. The nature of the work requires a deep understanding of the existing Linux desktop technology stack and community dynamics across multiple upstream projects. Candidates must have experience of engineering management in a company that ships software products.

This is a complex and challenging role at the center of a fast-moving and competitive environment. The successful candidate will be an accomplished technologist, proven leader, speaker and motivator, with management and organisational skills. We would like to put this opportunity in the hands of someone passionate about the future of open source, developer experiences, and community. We also require someone who will embrace the competitive and professional demands of a highly visible, widely used and mission critical enterprise platform.

• Agree strategy for Ubuntu desktop editions, working with community flavors
• Lead architecture for next-generation desktop services and systems in Rust, C, C++, Flutter and Golang
• Ensure that performance engineering, security engineering and documentation are deep values across the team
• Identify significant new open source capabilities and prioritize their inclusion in the desktop
• Challenge teams to rethink and re-imagine the desktop on a decade-long timeline
• Coordinate roadmap across Ubuntu and Canonical products with wider engineering leadership
• Shape the design of the Ubuntu experience in heterogenous environments - with Windows and Mac, on bare metal and cloud
• Engage with silicon vendors to enable future generations of desktop silicon and hardware

What we are looking for

• An exceptional academic track record at both high school and university
• A degree in software engineering, science, mathematics or related field
• Passion for desktop and graphics technology evidenced by deep personal investment in cutting edge techniques and capabilities
• Drive and a track record of excellence in leadership and operations
• Professional written and spoken English with outstanding presentation skill
• Deep operational experience with Linux (Ubuntu preferred)
• Excellent interpersonal skills, curiosity, flexibility, and accountability
• Result-oriented, with a personal drive to meet commitments
• Thoughtfulness and self-motivation
• Ability to travel twice a year, for company events up to two weeks long

Additional Skills We Value

• Software engineering management and leadership across multiple products and teams
• Rust, Golang or C/C++ architecture, performance and quality engineering insights
• Flutter and Dart experience and insights into the Flutter community
• Deep technical knowledge of graphics hardware and software layers in Linux

go to method of application »

• We have created a new career path at Canonical for Performance Engineers who bring exceptional clarity to software performance, correctness and efficiency. We are adding these roles to every engineering team at the company.
• As an open source platform, we have teams that work at every level of the software stack - from the kernel up through server and desktop applications, all the way to the web. We are adding roles with this focus in every engineering team in the company, to act as drivers of performance engineering skills, tools, culture and insights to our entire product range. We have also created a central performance engineering team, where we will drive shared tools, dashboarding capabilities, measurement frameworks, analytical capabilities and skills. We call this career focus 'percorr' because we have found that the same deep insights that enable sophisticated performance measurement and design also enable teams to improve their harnesses and frameworks for correctness. Understanding not only the application, but the runtime, the compiler, and the system, all the way down to the CPU, gives an engineer the ability to think creatively and with insight about the right things to measure, and the right ways to verify correctness. We have found that performance engineers will often improve the deepest and trickiest areas of our test harnesses, and unblock their teams to test and measure previously 'dark' aspects of their work.
• We also have teams that work with every major silicon vendor and cloud, with a particular emphasis on performance optimisation of the entire stack for that architecture, CPU family or hypervisor. Our goal is to ensure that Ubuntu users can select whatever platform they want for their workloads and know they have access to the very best performance and efficiency across the entire stack from kernel to codec.
• If they wish, we will enable performance and correctness engineers to move between products every two years, so that they have the opportunity to raise the bar for performance in an array of products over time, and also that teams have the benefit of fresh eyes on their processes, thinking, harnesses, dashboards and code. Our performance and correctness leads are expected to be truly exceptional individuals, and also leaders who are confident setting expectations of change, sharing insights and skills, running initiatives and programs. There is no way to move a meaningful codebase without also moving the people behind it.
• This is a career path for perfectionists and precision artists. Whether you have a particular language focus - C, C++, Rust, Golang, Python, Java, Flutter-Dart or others - or a particular love of the kernel or hardware or CPU instruction set, whether you see yourself as driving perceived user experience through performance or optimising the efficiency of data centers to reduce carbon footprint, this process is the best way to find a role at Canonical that speaks to your precision, rigour, insight and drive.

Location: We have teams in every time zone, and can accommodate applications from almost any country.
Nice-to-have skills we value

• Low-level CPU insights and assembly language - understanding cache, registers, vectorization, memory
• Kernel performance insights - scheduling, context switching, hardware acceleration
• Distributed systems performance insights - tracing, debugging
• Compiler level performance insights - profile guided optimization, inlining, assembler
• Runtime performance insights - Golang, Python, JVM, NodeJS
• Database performance evaluation - plans, indexing, data modelling, tracing, monitoring
• Web browser performance insights - JS, web frameworks, tracing, CSS
• Performance measurement tooling - profiling, eBPF, D-Trace, flamegraphs
• Benchmarks and performance measurement tools - Phoronix Test Suite, others
• Test harnesses and capabilities in C, C++, Rust, Python, Golang, NodeJS, JavaScript

The role entails

• Drive software performance and correctness in a specific project
• Collaborate with colleagues and community around the globe
• Work on shared tools and infrastructure for performance measurement, analysis and reporting
• Teach, train and develop skills in your team for performance culture and design
• Strengthen test capabilities, harnesses and pipelines
• Analyze systems and code to understand performance and scalability
• Solve problems directly or through influence, leadership and skills development
• Review code and technical designs

What we are looking for in you

• Exceptional academic track record from both high school and university
• Undergraduate degree in Computer Science, Mathematics or Physics
• Demonstrable personal initiatives to measure and improve performance, efficiency and correctness in code
• Confidence to respectfully speak up, exchange feedback, and share ideas without hesitation
• Track record of going above-and-beyond expectations to achieve outstanding results
• Leadership and commitment to skills development and mentorship
• Passion for technology evidenced by personal projects and initiatives
• The work ethic and confidence to shine alongside motivated colleagues
• Professional written and spoken English with excellent presentation skills
• Experience with Linux (Debian or Ubuntu preferred)
• Excellent interpersonal skills, curiosity, flexibility, and accountability
• Appreciative of diversity, polite and effective in a multi-cultural, multi-national organisation
• Thoughtfulness and self-motivation
• Result-oriented, with a personal drive to meet commitments
• Ability to travel internationally twice a year, for company events up to two weeks long

go to method of application »

• We are hiring a Director, Ubuntu Desktop Engineering to lead our mission to deliver the world's best open source desktop experience and developer platform, for consumers, professionals and developers. This is a director-level position, responsible for the integrated strategy, architecture and roadmap across multiple engineering teams working in Rust, C/C++, Flutter and Golang. We are looking for a technical leader with a deep understanding of Linux graphics technology, system architecture and security capability. We are also looking for a leader who has a personal interest in user experience, performance engineering, and consumer applications across form factors such as tablets, mobile, the desktop, and remote computing environments like VDI.
• We focus on delivering the cleanest, simplest, most reliable out-of-the-box experience for Linux on any laptop or workstation. We make careful choices to select best of breed components for the entire desktop and developer experience, and we invest in packaging and integration. We are also now looking to build new desktop capabilities, with a focus on performance, resource efficiency, media codecs and user experience. We are seeking a director of engineering with outstanding leadership and management qualities, as well as a clear vision for the future of the open source desktop. The nature of the work requires a deep understanding of the existing Linux desktop technology stack and community dynamics across multiple upstream projects. Candidates must have experience of engineering management in a company that ships software products.

This is a complex and challenging role at the center of a fast-moving and competitive environment. The successful candidate will be an accomplished technologist, proven leader, speaker and motivator, with management and organisational skills. We would like to put this opportunity in the hands of someone passionate about the future of open source, developer experiences, and community. We also require someone who will embrace the competitive and professional demands of a highly visible, widely used and mission critical enterprise platform.

• Agree strategy for Ubuntu desktop editions, working with community flavors
• Lead architecture for next-generation desktop services and systems in Rust, C, C++, Flutter and Golang
• Ensure that performance engineering, security engineering and documentation are deep values across the team
• Identify significant new open source capabilities and prioritize their inclusion in the desktop
• Challenge teams to rethink and re-imagine the desktop on a decade-long timeline
• Coordinate roadmap across Ubuntu and Canonical products with wider engineering leadership
• Shape the design of the Ubuntu experience in heterogenous environments - with Windows and Mac, on bare metal and cloud
• Engage with silicon vendors to enable future generations of desktop silicon and hardware

What we are looking for

• An exceptional academic track record at both high school and university
• A degree in software engineering, science, mathematics or related field
• Passion for desktop and graphics technology evidenced by deep personal investment in cutting edge techniques and capabilities
• Drive and a track record of excellence in leadership and operations
• Professional written and spoken English with outstanding presentation skill
• Deep operational experience with Linux (Ubuntu preferred)
• Excellent interpersonal skills, curiosity, flexibility, and accountability
• Result-oriented, with a personal drive to meet commitments
• Thoughtfulness and self-motivation
• Ability to travel twice a year, for company events up to two weeks long

Additional Skills We Value

• Software engineering management and leadership across multiple products and teams
• Rust, Golang or C/C++ architecture, performance and quality engineering insights
• Flutter and Dart experience and insights into the Flutter community
• Deep technical knowledge of graphics hardware and software layers in Linux

go to method of application »

• We are hiring a Global General Counsel to lead our in house legal, ESG, regulatory compliance and reporting team. We focus on customer, partner, supplier, contractor and employee contracts, predominantly under US and English law. We are growing our compliance and ESG reporting capacity as part of our program to list the business on a US or UK exchange.
• This is an opportunity to work in an exciting and dynamic technology company in the software sector. The successful candidate will lead work across a very wide variety of commercial contracts, counterparts and jurisdictions. The candidate must demonstrate excellent commercial and legal judgment, leadership, and teamwork at a global executive level. The sector is competitive and demanding, our GC will lead by example on work ethic, attention to detail, innovative use of technology and problem solving.

The role entails

• Establish policy and default positions on commercial, regulatory and strategic matters
• Represent Canonical on complex regulatory matters including privacy, security, technology policy and employment in multiple jurisdictions
• Draft, review and negotiate commercial contracts, including complex agreements with large global customers
• Accountability for software licensing, technology service agreements, commercial contracts, real estate agreements, IP, tax and employment matters
• Coordination and communication with legal counsel, executives, managers, specialists and the open source or Ubuntu Community
• Legal research and independent work to produce industry- or jurisdiction-specific analysis or position statements

Required Skills & Experience

• An exceptional academic track record from both high school and university
• An undergraduate degree in law, JD or equivalent, and active license to practice law
• Demonstrated leadership and management skill in a high profile, consequential role
• Experience in corporate, commercial, and intellectual property law with a software or technology focus
• Understanding of digital privacy, and the challenges in defending privacy, in a complex geopolitical environment
• Able to organise, prioritise and coordinate projects with end-to-end responsibility
• Confidence to respectfully speak up, exchange feedback, and share ideas without hesitation
• Track record of going above-and-beyond expectations to achieve outstanding results
• Passion for technology evidenced by personal projects and initiatives
• Professional written and spoken English with excellent presentation and interpersonal skills
• Appreciative of diversity, polite and effective in a multi-cultural, multi-national organisation
• Curiosity, flexibility, and accountability
• Thoughtfulness and self-motivation
• Result-oriented, with a personal drive to meet commitments
• Ability to travel twice a year, for company events up to two weeks long

Nice to have

• Understanding of free and open source software, and open culture, legal and philosophical principles
• Technical experience preferred, including experience of open source software
• Previous experience of in-house legal work
• Private practice legal experience