Engineering Manager - Solutions Engineering
Canonical
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>We want to transform the world of software operations by enabling true model-driven operations via next-generation infrastructure-as-code. This will allow companies to run very efficient bare-metal operations for high-performance computing, private cloud, data lakes, AI/ML, and analytics. We need to invent some new technology, and we need to build some new products; we are therefore looking for someone who can lead and inspire a regional software engineering team to fulfill this initiative.</p>
<p>The Solutions Engineering team works in close collaboration with our managed infrastructure operations team, which runs many private OpenStack clouds and Kubernetes clusters for customers around the world. This enables us to improve our infra-as-code products based on our own real experience, mirroring that of our users and customers. We work in Python, creating open-source automation capabilities that simplify operations for anybody, anywhere, who is building on Ubuntu.</p>
<p>Most of the team's work involves pure Python software development focused on enabling true DevOps workflows. We strive for high quality in both design, documentation, tests, and performance as we enhance operations code packages and Ubuntu itself in order to ensure our platform is the easiest, most robust, and best performing for driving your infrastructure.</p>
<p>As an Engineering Manager, your primary responsibility is to the people you lead and support: ensuring that they are growing as engineers, doing valuable work, and finding satisfaction in their career at Canonical. We need someone who can display technical leadership by leveraging a solid background in software development so that they're able to challenge and grow their team members. You will have the opportunity to influence the culture, facilitate technical delivery, and work with your team on direction and execution.</p>
<h3>What you will do</h3>
<ul>
<li>Lead and develop a team of Python engineers working remotely in global locations</li>
<li>Hiring, coaching, mentoring, feedback, and hands-on career development</li>
<li>Demonstrate sound engineering principles by directly contributing code yourself</li>
<li>Plan and manage progress on agreed goals and projects</li>
<li>Set and manage expectations with other engineering and operations teams</li>
<li>Coordinate with management and internal and external stakeholders or customers</li>
<li>Advocate for modern, agile software development practices</li>
<li>Help develop and evangelize great engineering and organizational practices</li>
<li>Grow a healthy, collaborative engineering culture in line with the company values</li>
<li>Be an active part of the leadership team and collaborate with other leaders in the organisation</li>
<li>Travel globally up to 10% of time for internal and external events</li>
</ul>
<h3>Who you are</h3>
<ul>
<li>You love developing and growing people and have a track record of doing it</li>
<li>You are knowledgeable and passionate about agile software development </li>
<li>You love leading, coaching, and mentoring software developers - especially Python ones</li>
<li>You are knowledgeable in cloud computing concepts & technologies</li>
<li>You are comfortable administrating Linux servers, including their storage and networking</li>
<li>You have hands-on experience with software automation</li>
<li>You are organized and want your team to deliver high-quality software in a timely manner</li>
<li>You are a lifelong learner</li>
</ul>
<h3>Bonus points for</h3>
<ul>
<li>You have graduated with a university degree in Computer Science or related software engineering field</li>
<li>Having a thorough understanding of modern infrastructure, including OpenStack or Kubernetes</li>
<li>Having experience in operations as well as software development</li>
<li>Being familiar with the challenges of large-scale, multi-cloud operations</li>
<li>Go expertise</li>
</ul>
<h3>What we offer colleagues</h3>
<p>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 recognize outstanding performance. In addition to base pay, we offer a performance-driven annual bonus or commiss
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.
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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 →