Linux Go Engineer at Canonical - Remote EMEA/Americas — 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. This SnapD engineer role is open to EMEA and Americas time zones, giving nomads an exceptionally wide berth to choose their base.
Schedule & async culture: Canonical is built around async-first, distributed work. While some team overlap will be expected across EMEA/Americas windows, there is no rigid 9-to-5 requirement. Engineers are evaluated on output, not presence, making this highly compatible with flexible nomad schedules.
Visa considerations: The allowed region spans dozens of countries with active digital nomad visa programs. Top options include:
- Portugal (D8 visa) — ideal EMEA base, low cost of living, strong tech community
- Colombia (Digital Nomad Visa) — Medellín is a top nomad hub in LATAM, well within the Americas window
- Costa Rica (Digital Nomad Visa) — stable, English-friendly, Americas-timezone aligned
Cost-of-living context: With no published salary, lifestyle budget depends on your negotiated package. Canonical compensates by geography, so expect location-adjusted pay. In Lisbon, a comfortable nomad lifestyle runs ~$2,500–3,500/month; in Bangkok ~$1,500–2,000/month (note: Asia is outside the allowed region); in Medellín ~$1,500–2,500/month — all very livable on a senior software engineer salary.
Travel perks: Priority Pass membership and travel upgrades for long-haul company events are standout nomad-friendly perks. Twice-yearly in-person sprints in interesting global locations are baked into the culture — paid travel to meet your team is part of the job.
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 a Linux Devices Software Engineer on our SnapD team to work on mission-critical Golang code, focused on software delivery, containers, security sandboxing, telemetry and device management.
Snaps are next-generation software packaging and delivery for Linux. They are designed for safety, security and robustness, with application-specific confinement of containers optimised for IoT devices, desktops and servers. Our goal is that snaps work across multiple Linux flavors to ensure that publishers have the simplest way to reach the whole Linux world.
This role requires an obsession with quality and performance, for work at the heart of the operating system. It also requires an interest in the software publishing and consumption experience. Applicants should be passionate about open source software development. We value collaboration, peer reviews, good unit/integration testing and maintainable code. General knowledge and experience with Linux as a developer platform is required. Having previous experience with Golang is very nice to have.
Location: This role will be based remotely in the EMEA or Americas regions.
The Role Entails
- Collaborate proactively with a distributed team
- Write high quality code to create new features
- Debug Linux system level issues and produce high quality code to fix them
- Review code produced by other engineers
- Discuss ideas and collaborate on finding good solutions
- Obsess over how to achieve robustness despite unexpected events like power outages
- Work from home with global travel for up to two weeks, twice a year
What We Are Looking For in You
- You love technology and working with brilliant people
- You are curious, flexible, articulate, and accountable
- You value soft skills, are thoughtful and self-motivated
- You have a Bachelor's or equivalent in Computer Science, STEM or similar degree
- You have professional software development experience using Go, Python, C, or C++
- You know Linux system-level fundamentals, e.g. cgroups, namespaces, apparmor
- Commitment to software testing, code reviews and maintainable code
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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