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Engineering Manager - App Stores

Canonical

Remote OK
Home based - Worldwide
Worldwide
US hours

Hirezar Summary for South African Applicants

This remote ok full time position at Canonical is open worldwide, so South Africans can apply. As a remote position, you can work from anywhere in South Africa — whether you're based in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, or a smaller town.

Job Description

<p>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.</p>
<p>The company is founder-led, profitable, and growing.</p>
<p>This is a technical management role to lead a team that develops Python and Golang micro-services that power our global software distribution engine. The world sees it as the&nbsp;<a href="https://snapcraft.io/store">Snap Store</a> and <a href="https://charmhub.io/">Charmhub.io</a> marketplaces, behind the scenes it is a unified system that understands key concepts in software distribution - architectures, releases, betas, release candidates, stable releases, branches and more. We are on a journey to transform the experience that people all over the world have with their open source software by significantly expanding the range of software we can deliver through this system. If you have a passion for clean APIs, believe that great engineers ship software calmly and regularly against an agile plan, and know that tests are the key to higher velocity and reliability, you'll fit right in.</p>
<p>This is a great opportunity to take part in engineering a highly scalable SaaS product (think about the load on our systems when one of our largest Ubuntu Desktop snaps is updated by the publisher, for instance). In addition, you will have the opportunity to learn from Canonical's world-class security team as we work collectively to deliver this capability, safely, to our customers around the world.</p>
<p>As an Engineering Manager at Canonical, you must be technically strong, but your main responsibility is to run an effective team and develop the colleagues you manage. You will develop and review code as a leader, but know that the best way to improve the product is to ensure that the whole team is focused, productive and unblocked. You are expected to help them grow as engineers, do meaningful work, do it outstandingly well, find professional and personal satisfaction, and work well with colleagues and the community. You will also be expected to be a positive influence on culture, facilitate technical delivery, and regularly reflect with your team on strategy and execution. You will collaborate closely with other Engineering Managers, product managers, and architects, producing an engineering roadmap with ambitious and achievable goals.</p>
<p>We expect Engineering Managers to be fluent in the programming language, architecture, and components that their team uses. Code reviews and architectural leadership are part of the job. The commitment to healthy engineering practices, documentation, quality and performance optimisation is as important, as is the requirement for fair and clear management, and the obligation to ensure a high-performing team.</p>
<p>This is a great opportunity to really learn how to do engineering of a highly-scalable SaaS product (think about the load on our systems when one of our largest Ubuntu Desktop snaps is updated by the publisher, for instance).&nbsp; In addition, you will have the opportunity to learn from Canonical's world-class security team as we work collectively to deliver this capability, safely, to our customers around the world.</p>
<p><strong>Location</strong>: This role may be based remotely in the Americas, Europe, Middle East or Africa time zones.</p>
<h3>What your day will look like</h3>
<ul>
<li>Lead a remote team of engineers in your time zone</li>
<li>Develop talent through coaching, mentoring, feedback, and hands-on career development</li>
<li>Set and manage expectations with other engineering teams, management, and external stakeholders</li>
<li>Be an active part of the leadership team and collaborate with other leaders in the organisation</li>
<li>With your team, build clean web service APIs to support both CLI and web frontend clients, using Python (and optionally Golang).</li>
<li>Engage with many other teams at Canonical, as well as the open-source community and commercial partners</li>
</ul>
<h3>What we are looking for in you</h3>
<ul>
<li>Good experience in leading modern, agile software development practices</li>
<li>Experience in forming a healthy, collaborative engineering culture in line with the company values</li>
<li>Demonstrative experience of being a role model for sound engineering principles and directly contributing toward your team's goals</li>
<li>Willingness to travel up to 4 times a year for internal events</li>
<li>You love to mentor

Tips for South African Applicants

Timezone Advantage

South Africa (SAST, UTC+2) overlaps well with European business hours and has a few hours of overlap with US East Coast. Mention your timezone flexibility in your application.

Salary in Context

Even without a listed salary, international remote roles typically pay 2-3x more than equivalent local positions in South Africa due to the exchange rate advantage.

Application Tips

Tailor your CV to international standards — use a clean format, highlight remote work experience, and include your English proficiency. Many SA applicants succeed by emphasising their strong work ethic and cultural adaptability.

Load Shedding Preparedness

If you're applying for a remote role, having a backup power solution (UPS, inverter, or generator) and mobile data as a backup internet connection shows employers you're prepared for South Africa's infrastructure challenges.

About Canonical

Canonical is a company in the Operations industry that hires remote workers from South Africa. They currently have 230 open positions on Hirezar. View all Canonical jobs →