Observability 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 an Observability Engineering Manager who will lead the development of the distributed tracing or service mesh products as part of our Observability group. Engineering managers at Canonical are always coders who review and lead both architecture and code, while also being astute judges of character and comfortable setting expectations and holding colleagues accountable. We are building an observability stack that is easy to deploy and operate on Kubernetes, part of a broader initiative to deliver the world's best suite of open source tools—metrics, logging, telemetry, alerting, tracing and profiling. Our goal is to make observability tools integral and pervasive across software practices. Our implementation of Kubernetes operators is opinionated, resilient, and scalable, providing deep insights out of the box. The user experience is polished and seamless for end‑users, and its administrators enjoy smooth, lightweight Day 1 and Day 2 operations. We are excited to be improving the state of the art for open‑source observability.

This is an exciting opportunity for a software engineer passionate about open source software, Linux, Kubernetes, and Observability. Build a rewarding, meaningful career working with the best and brightest people in technology at Canonical, the growing international software company behind Ubuntu.

Location:

This role can be home based in the EMEA or Americas regions.

Key Responsibilities

Manage a distributed team of engineers and its observability portfolio

Organize and lead the team's processes to help it achieve its objectives

Conduct one‑on‑one meetings with team members

Identify and measure team health indicators

Interact with a vibrant community

Review code produced by other engineers

Attend conferences to represent Canonical and its Observability Stack

Qualifications & Experience

An exceptional academic track record from both high school and university

A proven track record of professional experience in software delivery

Professional software development experience, preferably with a track record in open source

Willingness to travel up to 4 times a year for internal events

Professional written and spoken English

Experience with Linux (Debian or Ubuntu preferred)

Excellent interpersonal skills, curiosity, flexibility, and accountability

Passion, thoughtfulness, and self‑motivation

Excellent communication and presentation skills

Result‑oriented, with a personal drive to meet commitments

Nice‑to‑have Skills

Experience as an engineering manager, with a track record of building great, high‑performance teams

Professional Python development experience

A working knowledge of Go

Open source contribution experience

Interest and experience with container technologies

A proven understanding of the importance of observability and monitoring for keeping software running smoothly

Experience designing and implementing observability solutions

Benefits & Compensation

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

Team Member Assistance Program & Wellness Platform

Opportunity to travel to new locations to meet colleagues

Priority Pass and travel upgrades for long‑haul company events

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.

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