Software Engineer - Python - Container Images

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.

Canonical is building a new generation of Ubuntu-based container images to simplify open-source application deployment across the world. These container images will be free to use with long-term security commitments, and engineered for performance, security and usability. As with Ubuntu, we will work in the open and welcome community participation.

In this role, you’ll be building and maintaining an ever-growing portfolio of container images while working with multiple teams, both inside and outside Canonical, to ensure these are of the highest quality and offer a seamless Ubuntu user experience. You will also be highly involved in the implementation and maintenance of the Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery automation around these container images, for which you are expected to demonstrate deep insights into container-based DevOps.

You will be contributing to fast-moving products like Rocks (OCI images) and thus have the chance to help steer and consolidate this growing team. You’ll gain experience with numerous container technologies and open source projects, where your feedback and contributions will be critical to driving widespread container adoption. As an engineer, your seniority will be based on your software development background and ability to lead junior team members.

Come build a rewarding, meaningful career working with the best and brightest people in technology at Canonical. This is an exciting opportunity for experienced software engineers looking for a place to leave their mark, who are passionate about shaping an open source product with the highest quality, with and for the community!

• Build robust, scalable, leading-edge container images
• Work on automated CI/CD processes for building, testing and publishing our container images
• Write tools and tests for assessing security compliance and cloud-native compatibility
• Participate in strong engineering process through code and architectural review
• Contribute, both as a user and developer, to the improvement of our Python- and Go-based container-building tools
• Provide technical feedback for the team’s decision-making process
• Engage with the open-source community as a subject-matter expert
• Grow our knowledge base and write documentation
• Work in a collaborative, agile and globally distributed environment
• Mentor and help hiring
• Work from home with global travel up to 15% for internal and external events

• You are knowledgeable and passionate about software development
• You are a team player and have experience in collaborative development
• You have worked with CI/CD systems (e.g. Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Concourse CI, etc.)
• You are familiar with GitOps principles and workflows
• You have a track record of delivering timely, high-quality software
• You have experience building container images
• You master at least one container management/orchestration tool (e.g. Docker, Kubernetes, etc.)
• You have experience with Python
• You are experienced with Linux systems administration and package management
• You have strong written and verbal communication skills to convey technical concepts
• You bring clarity to technical and engineering discussions
• You are someone who strongly believes that sharing is caring, and knowledge is power
• Your skills range from those of a Graduate to a mid-senior Software Engineer
• You have a Bachelor’s or equivalent in Computer Science, STEM or a similar degree

Canonical is a pioneering tech firm at the forefront of the global move to open source. As the company that publishes Ubuntu, one of the most important open-source projects and the platform for AI, IoT, and the cloud, we are changing the world of software. We recruit on a global basis and set a very high standard for people joining the company. We expect excellence; in order to succeed, we need to be the best at what we do. Most colleagues at Canonical have worked from home since our inception in 2004.​ Working here is a step into the future and will challenge you to think differently, work smarter, learn new skills, and raise your game.

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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