Enterprise CSM at Canonical - Open Source Career in Columbus
Career & Market Insight
Strategic Growth Role: Customer Success at Canonical is explicitly described as "fairly new and strategic," signaling genuine upside for early movers who can help shape the department's processes and culture. This is a green flag for career builders who want influence, not just execution.
Compensation & Market Position: Canonical does not disclose salary ranges, which is a mild red flag for transparency-minded candidates. However, their annual compensation review process and performance-driven bonus structure are standard for enterprise SaaS. Enterprise CSM roles in APAC typically command $70K–$120K USD equivalent depending on country — candidates should negotiate actively given the seniority implied (5+ years required).
Skills You'll Develop:
- Deep expertise in open-source infrastructure (Ubuntu, Kubernetes, OpenStack, Ceph) — highly marketable in cloud-native hiring
- Enterprise account management and cross-functional stakeholder leadership
- Bilingual (Japanese/English) B2B communication in technical contexts — rare and valuable
- Agile project coordination across global distributed teams
Culture Signals: Canonical operates as a lean, remote-first organization with a high-performance bar. The expectation of "excellence" and weekly business reviews suggest a results-oriented, metrics-driven culture. Team size hints indicate CSMs work across Sales, Engineering, and Support — broad visibility but potentially thin specialist support.
Red Flags to Consider: The requirement for both native Japanese and senior IT experience narrows the candidate pool significantly, which could mean strong leverage in negotiation but also a demanding dual expectation in the role.
The role of an Enterprise Customer Success Manager at Canonical is a strategic position focused on reducing risk and churn, facilitating adoption of new products or services, and supporting expansion within existing accounts.
Customer Success Managers (CSMs) are responsible for developing trust with their assigned customers and providing them with the best possible experience navigating Canonical's vast offering. By clearly understanding customer objectives, the CSM can align expectations, suggest additional services or product capacity to increase loyalty, alleviate pain points, and help draw and deliver on an appropriate collaboration roadmap.
We are growing our Customer Success team to continue offering thoughtful, smart, and precise interactions across our product portfolio — from Ubuntu to open-source infrastructure and applications. To provide the appropriate level of focus for every customer, in their native language and with excellent English for internal interactions, CSMs are specialized in one of the following motions:
- Mass – Small and medium businesses starting their journey with Canonical
- Focus – Strategic and Enterprise customers
- Step Growth – A selection of high-potential customers
All CSMs also contribute to business support at the company level for all remaining, not-yet-assigned customers (Digital), including Store customers, through campaign management and customer requests.
Location: This role will be based remotely in the APAC region.
What your day will look like
- Onboard new customers and introduce them to our products and support processes. Products include: Ubuntu Pro, MAAS, Landscape, OpenStack, Ceph, Kubernetes, data applications, and many more.
- Coordinate complex projects in interaction with developers, IT managers, and decision makers from various industries.
- Collaborate with Sales, Field Engineering, and Support in developing and delivering engagement plans that fulfill the customer's objectives.
- Manage a portfolio of customers in a specific geographic region and identify growth opportunities or renewal risks in coordination with Sales.
- Run a disciplined, weekly customer and business review process with cross-functional teams, identifying and prioritizing blockers, and driving resolution through corporate product and engineering teams.
- Serve as a customer advocate internally and influence Canonical's product roadmaps, websites, documentation, processes, and people to improve customer satisfaction and retention.
- Support customers through reactive ticket requests.
- Create campaigns targeting multiple customers through digital touch-points and activities.
What we are looking for in you
The ideal candidate will display impeccable customer-facing skills and a passion for cloud and data centre infrastructure technologies. We are also looking for:
- Native Japanese language proficiency required, with excellent command of English — both are mandatory.
- Minimum 5 years of work experience with a strong background in IT and exposure to projects related to at least one of: Linux OS, data applications, storage, cloud computing, networking, security, migration, or IoT.
- Excellent presentation skills with the ability to guide conversations about complex software.
- Experience building and improving internal processes while maintaining timely delivery on customer-related projects.
- A true team player capable of interacting with all departments and at all levels, both internally and externally.
- Knowledge of agile methodologies.
Additional skills that you might also bring
- Experience with Salesforce, Jira, and CRMs.
What we offer you
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 recognise outstanding performance. In addition to base pay, we offer a performance-driven annual bonus. 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 — we've been working remotely since 2004!
- 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 Programme
- Opportunity to travel to new locations to meet colleagues from your team and others
- Priority Pass for travel 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 on a daily basis. 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.
Canonical has been a remote-first company since its inception in 2004. Work at Canonical is a step into the future, and will challenge you to think differently, work smarter, learn new skills, and raise your game. Canonical provides a unique window into the world of 21st-century digital business.
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.