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Engineering Manager, Commercial Systems

Canonical

Remote OK
Home based - EMEA
EMEA
US hours

Hirezar Summary for South African Applicants

This remote ok full time position at Canonical is open across the EMEA region, which includes South Africa. 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 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.</p>
<p>The company is founder led, profitable and growing.</p>
<p>We are hiring an <strong>Engineering Manager</strong>, who strives for accountability for the development of an internal product, who has high engineering quality standards, continuously develops their skills as well as 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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>The <strong>Billing</strong> 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, payment systems. This team is an excellent match for those interested in growing their skills in the billing and payment processing domain.</p>
<p>The <strong>Business Systems</strong> 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.</p>
<p>The <strong>Data Governance</strong> team has a mission to enable a secure and well-governed access to comprehensive data sets originating at many internal and external data sources formed in a data mesh<strong>.</strong> The team works with well-known open-source data governance tools such as Trino and Ranger, defines and executes data governance processes, and democratizes the data at Canonical.</p>
<p>The <strong>Livepatch</strong> 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 and with a strong focus on engineering quality and reliability.</p>
<p><strong>Location</strong>: This role will be based remotely in the EMEA region.</p>
<h3><strong>The role entails</strong></h3>
<ul>
<li>Accountability for the design and development of an internal product</li>
<li>Leading a team of software engineers</li>
<li>Developing the skills and capabilities of direct reports</li>
<li>Seeking improvements to established processes, designs, and solutions</li>
<li>Building an understanding of business needs to deliver the most impact</li>
</ul>
<h3><strong>What we are looking for in you</strong></h3>
<ul>
<li>Exceptional academic track record from both high school and university</li>
<li>Undergraduate degree in a technical subject or a compelling narrative about your alternative chosen path</li>
<li>Track record of going above-and-beyond expectations to achieve outstanding results</li>
<li>Experience with software development in a high-level language (Golang, Python, Java, ...)</li>
<li>Professional written and spoken English with excellent presentation skills</li>
<li>Result-oriented, with a personal drive to meet commitments</li>
<li>Ability to travel internationally twice a year, for company events up to two weeks long</li>
</ul>
<h3><strong>Nice-to-have skills</strong></h3>
<ul>
<li>Performance engineering and SRE experience</li>
<li>Experience with data governance, data engineering, or data science</li>
<li>Experience with accounting, sales, sales operations, or other business roles</li>
</ul>
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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 →