Remote IAM Engineering Manager - EMEA & AMER — Columbus
Traveler-Friendly Insight
Canonical is one of the most nomad-friendly employers in tech — fully distributed since 2004, with 1,200+ colleagues across 75+ countries and almost no office-based roles. This Engineering Manager role is open to the entire EMEA and AMER regions, giving you enormous geographic flexibility.
Async culture & timezone flexibility: Canonical operates as a genuinely distributed company, meaning most work is async-by-default. However, as an Engineering Manager you'll need regular overlap with your team, so expect to maintain reasonable working hours within EMEA (UTC-1 to UTC+3) or AMER (UTC-5 to UTC-8) windows. Pure night-owl nomad schedules may be constrained by team sync calls.
Visa considerations: With allowed countries spanning Europe, the Americas, Middle East, and Africa, popular nomad destinations with relevant visa options include:
- Portugal – D8 Digital Nomad Visa; cost-effective base in Lisbon or Porto
- Colombia (Medellín) – Digital Nomad Visa (up to 2 years); low cost of living
- UAE (Dubai) – Remote Work Visa; tax-free income, strong infrastructure
- Spain – Digital Nomad Visa launched 2023; excellent lifestyle
Travel perks are a highlight: Twice-yearly team sprints, Priority Pass lounge access, and travel upgrades for long-haul company events make the mandatory travel requirement a genuine perk rather than a burden. The $2,000 annual L&D budget can also fund coworking memberships or professional conferences.
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.
We are hiring an Engineering Manager for IAM (Identity and Access Management) to build high-performing Go and Python services and secure identity and access management solutions that will be used across all company products. From Ubuntu One SSO to Juju, LXD and MAAS, your team will define the way Canonical users, clients and community members access their favorite open source applications.
This is an opportunity for a software engineering manager with a passion for distributed systems operations to help transform the future of identity management at Canonical. Experience in the identity and access management (IAM) field is desirable but not required. You will work with upstream open source projects, alongside internal teams to deliver high quality software that can be deployed on bare metal, public cloud and Kubernetes.
As the identity team engineering manager, you will bring significant software development experience, Kubernetes knowledge and a keen eye for software design, performance and security. You will be responsible for working with product management to define the technical vision for the products, managing the team backlog, reviewing code and coaching younger team members.
You will also be involved in all aspects of the software development process: designing software, writing high-quality code and tests, providing insightful code reviews, writing documentation, and helping to troubleshoot issues.
In addition to the engineering behind the project itself, you'll have the chance to work with industry-leading teams inside Canonical, ensuring your work is backed by rock-solid data stores and is highly observable using our Kubernetes-based Observability stack. You'll work with broader open source communities, participating in "hackfest" events, webinars, and conferences.
Location: This role will be based remotely in the EMEA or AMER regions.
What we are looking for in you
- Proven experience hiring and leading a high-performance software engineering team
- Experience with Go and Python software development
- Ability to design and implement complex, distributed systems
- Experience working with container technology and Kubernetes
- Strong understanding of software/infrastructure security and performance
- Experience designing and/or operating large-scale distributed systems
- Knowledge of identity and access management technologies and standards is desirable but not essential
- Exceptional academic track record from both high school and university
- Undergraduate degree in a technical subject or a compelling narrative about your alternative chosen path
- Professional written and spoken English with excellent presentation skills
- Excellent interpersonal skills, curiosity, flexibility, and accountability
- Ability to travel internationally twice a year for company events up to two weeks long
What we offer colleagues
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 commission. We provide all team members with additional benefits which reflect our values and ideals. We balance our programs to meet local needs and ensure fairness globally.
- Distributed work environment with twice-yearly team sprints in person
- Personal learning and development budget of USD 2,000 per year
- Annual compensation review
- Recognition rewards
- Annual holiday leave
- Maternity and paternity leave
- Team Member Assistance Program & Wellness Platform
- Opportunity to travel to new locations to meet colleagues
- Priority Pass and travel upgrades for long-haul company events
About Canonical
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.
Canonical is an equal opportunity employer.
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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