Engineering Manager at Canonical - Lead Open Source Teams in Columbus
Career & Market Insight
Engineering Manager at Canonical represents a strong career move for senior engineers ready to step into people leadership within a globally respected open-source company. The role spans four distinct product domains — Billing, Business Systems, Data Governance, and Livepatch — offering meaningful breadth depending on which team you join.
Compensation context: Canonical does not publish salary ranges and adjusts pay by geography. Engineering Manager roles at comparable distributed tech companies (GitLab, Elastic, HashiCorp) typically range from $120K–$200K USD annually at senior levels, with performance bonuses on top. The USD 2,000 L&D budget is modest but real.
Skills you'll develop:
- People management in async, globally distributed teams — a highly transferable and increasingly rare skill set
- Golang-based backend architecture (Billing, Livepatch teams) — a language in strong demand
- Data mesh and governance frameworks (Trino, Ranger) — rapidly growing field as enterprises manage AI/ML data pipelines
- SaaS billing and payment systems — valuable in any product company
Green flags: Canonical is profitable, founder-led, and growing — reducing layoff risk. The company has a 20-year track record of remote work, signaling genuine organizational maturity. High hiring bar (academic track record emphasis) means you'll work with strong colleagues.
Watch out for: The emphasis on "exceptional academic track record" can signal a rigid filter. The role requires travel twice a year (up to two weeks each), which is a real commitment. Salary opacity may require strong negotiation skills.
Canonical is a leading provider of open-source software and operating systems for 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 more than 80 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 who strives for accountability for the development of an internal product, who has high engineering quality standards, continuously develops their skills as well as the skills of their direct reports, and who has the drive to deliver. This is an exciting opportunity to work with great people and exciting open-source solutions on innovative engineering solutions supporting Canonical's growth.
The Commercial Systems unit is conceived as six engineering teams that closely collaborate with other engineering and business teams at Canonical. Services designed, developed, and operated by the Commercial Systems unit are at the heart of Canonical business. We are looking for software engineering managers for these teams:
The Billing team designs, develops, and operates a Golang service that provides a standardized and scalable capability to turn metrics into billable amounts, enable customers to see their current spend with Canonical at any time, and ensure accurate, reliable, and timely billing. The service further integrates with other engineering, business, and payment systems. This team is an excellent match for those interested in growing their skills in the billing and payment processing domain.
The Business Systems team is responsible for systems such as NetSuite, Salesforce, and several others. The engineers work closely with operations teams, implement business processes, and keep the systems compliant. This team is a great opportunity for a software engineering leader with a genuine interest in understanding the business, high engineering standards, and drive to deliver first-class experience to Canonical employees using those systems to get their job done.
The Data Governance team has a mission to enable secure and well-governed access to comprehensive data sets originating at many internal and external data sources formed in a data mesh. The team works with well-known open-source data governance tools such as Trino and Ranger, defines and executes data governance processes, and democratizes data at Canonical.
The Livepatch team designs and develops a service for the delivery of Linux kernel patches to shrink the exploit window for critical and high severity Linux kernel vulnerabilities, by patching the Linux kernel between security maintenance windows while the system runs. The engineering team behind this product develops Golang-based client and backend components, while another Canonical team, the Kernel team, develops the security patches. This team is a great opportunity for those interested in security with a strong focus on engineering quality and reliability.
Location: This role will be based remotely in the EMEA region.
The role entails- Accountability for the design and development of an internal product
- Leading a team of software engineers
- Developing the skills and capabilities of direct reports
- Seeking improvements to established processes, designs, and solutions
- Building an understanding of business needs to deliver the most impact
- Exceptional academic track record from both high school and university
- Undergraduate degree in a technical subject or a compelling narrative about your alternative chosen path
- Track record of going above-and-beyond expectations to achieve outstanding results
- Experience with software development in a high-level language (Golang, Python, Java, etc.)
- Professional written and spoken English with excellent presentation skills
- Result-oriented, with a personal drive to meet commitments
- Ability to travel internationally twice a year, for company events up to two weeks long
- Performance engineering and SRE experience
- Experience with data governance, data engineering, or data science
- Experience with accounting, sales, sales operations, or other business roles
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
- Employee Assistance Program
- Opportunity to travel to new locations to meet colleagues
- Priority Pass, and travel upgrades for long haul company events
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 its 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.