Software Engineer

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 a Software Engineer to develop, test and release improvements to the Ubuntu on public clouds. 

The quality and stability of the Ubuntu is critically important, since it's available on every public cloud. You’ll work with teams across Canonical working on Ubuntu team, alongside major cloud partners to develop, test and release improvements to the Ubuntu cloud images. You will also be a voice in communication with our users, ensuring their needs are met.

This role requires quality-oriented software engineering in Python and a focus on software interoperability over a vast range of target releases and environments. Excellent Python skills are a key requirement, with previous contributions to open source Python projects being an advantage. This role involves creating and managing Ubuntu images; therefore, experience in configuring apt, and knowledge of deb packaging and general system administration is advantageous in this role.

Applicants should be passionate about the Ubuntu project and its values and about building tools that are used by millions of people around the world. A personal interest and emphasis on quality, thinking of edge cases, ease of use, documentation, and careful community coordination is important. Ubuntu is used for all kinds of users, from mission-critical environments to hobbyist Ubuntu users; applicants should be ready to work with the whole spectrum of end users and help guide engineering best practices with all of them in mind.

The role entails

• Collaborate proactively with a distributed team
• Write high quality code, with unit and functional tests, to create new features
• Debug issues and produce high quality code to fix them
• Review code produced by other engineers
• Discuss ideas and investigate to find good solutions
• Work from home, with global travel 2 to 4 weeks per year for internal and external events

What we are looking for in you

• You love technology and working with brilliant people
• You are curious, flexible, articulate, and accountable
• You value soft skills and are passionate, enterprising, thoughtful, and self-motivated
• You have a Bachelor’s or equivalent in Computer Science, STEM or similar degree