C

Product Marketing Lead

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 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><strong>The company is founder led, profitable and growing.</strong></p>
<p>Product marketers at Canonical sit between product and the market. They take deeply technical open source products and decide what they mean to a user and a buyer; which problem they solve, who should care, why we win, and what it should cost. That work shows up as positioning and messaging, launch plans, competitive intelligence, global campaigns, and the enablement that helps sales tell a coherent story.</p>
<p>This is a role for someone who wants ownership rather than a brief. You will pick up a portfolio area, form your own point of view on the market, and defend it with evidence. We expect product marketers to talk to customers and community members directly, and to bring opinions to product and sales rather than waiting to be told what to say.</p>
<p>We have a bias for action, focus effort on the most impactful activities, and take ownership of our results. We work across long buying cycles, balance storytelling with data, design experiments, track outcomes, and iterate rapidly to find what works.</p>
<p>Location: This role is remote for anyone based in EMEA.</p>
<h2>The role entails</h2>
<p>You will own product marketing for one of our product areas, from the market thesis through to the assets that sales and campaigns run on. You will be accountable for whether the story lands, whether launches convert, and whether the sales team can repeat the message without you in the room.</p>
<p>You will:</p>
<ul>
<li>Own positioning, messaging, and the narrative hierarchy for your product area, and keep it consistent from the website through to the sales deck</li>
<li>Lead product launches end to end with tiering, timeline, cross-functional plan, assets, and post-launch reporting</li>
<li>Build and maintain the competitive picture for your area: who we lose to, why, and what we say about it</li>
<li>Support building the enablement that sales actually uses: battlecards, discovery questions, objection handling, demo narratives</li>
<li>Run structured customer and community research, including win-loss, to keep the messaging grounded in real language rather than internal assumptions</li>
<li>Partner with demand generation, content, web, and events to turn positioning into campaigns that move pipeline</li>
<li>Raise the standard of the craft around you through review, mentoring, and shared frameworks</li>
</ul>
<h2>What we are looking for in you</h2>
<ul>
<li>Strong written and verbal communication in English</li>
<li>An exceptional academic track record from high school and university</li>
<li>Proven product marketing experience in B2B software, SaaS, or open source</li>
<li>A track record of owning positioning and messaging for a product or portfolio, not just executing someone else's</li>
<li>Evidence of launches you led that changed a business outcome such as adoption, pipeline, or win rate</li>
<li>The technical curiosity to hold your own with product managers and engineers and to understand the product beyond the datasheet</li>
<li>Comfort using data to test a hypothesis, evaluate a campaign, and change your mind</li>
<li>Ability to influence and align stakeholders across product, sales, and marketing without formal authority</li>
<li>Excellent storytelling skills applied to technical solutions, for both developer and executive audiences</li>
<li>Skill at managing complex, cross-functional projects with several dependencies and a fixed date</li>
<li>Fast adaptation to change and to new technology in marketing</li>
<li>Proactive, outcome-driven, and confident operating independently at a global scale</li>
</ul>
<h2>Nice-to-have skills</h2>
<ul>
<li>Experience marketing to developers, or in infrastructure, security, or IoT categories</li>
<li>Familiarity with open source communities and commercial open source business models</li>
<li>Experience across both product-led and sales-led motions, and with the handover between them</li>
<li>Public speaking, webinars, or conference presence in a technical field</li>
<li>Experience mentoring or leading other product marketers</li>
</ul>
<h2>What we offer you</h2>
<p>Your base pay will depend on various factors including your geographical location, level of experience, knowledge and skills. In addition to the benefits above, certain roles are

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 →