Linux Cloud Engineer at Canonical - Remote Worldwide — Columbus
Traveler-Friendly Insight
Canonical is one of the most nomad-friendly employers in tech. Remote-first since 2004 with 1,200+ employees across 75+ countries, this role is genuinely location-independent — not just "remote-tolerant." The job listing explicitly covers EMEA, LATAM, Canada, and the USA, giving you a very wide geographic footprint to work from.
Schedule flexibility: The role is async-friendly by design. Canonical's distributed culture de-emphasizes synchronous meetings, though you'll need some overlap with partners like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. Expect occasional cross-timezone calls, but no rigid 9-to-5 requirement is stated.
Travel perks for nomads: The role includes 2–4 weeks of company-funded global travel per year for team sprints, plus a Priority Pass and travel upgrades for long-haul events — a rare perk that turns business travel into a lifestyle upgrade.
Visa considerations: With no country restriction and truly remote work, popular digital nomad visa destinations suit this role well:
- Portugal (D8 Visa): Monthly costs ~$2,000–$2,800 in Lisbon; strong tech community and EU base.
- Thailand (LTR Visa or METV): Monthly costs ~$1,200–$1,800 in Chiang Mai; excellent value for a software engineer salary.
- Colombia (Digital Nomad Visa): Medellín runs ~$1,000–$1,500/month; fast internet and a growing nomad scene.
The $2,000/year learning budget can also fund coworking memberships or technical certifications while traveling.
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 Software Engineer to work on Linux, cloud infrastructure, pipelines and automation, and open source software.
You will work closely with Amazon, Microsoft, Google and other world-class cloud partners to make Ubuntu the best platform there is in the clouds. Your time will be split between build system development (using Python, Jenkins and shell), implementation of cloud-related features within Ubuntu Server itself, operation of our continuous delivery pipelines, and direct partner engagement. You will strive to automate the delivery of existing and new Ubuntu products applied to all modern workloads from web servers to GPU-aided AI for servers, VMs and containers, and integrate our products with cloud native services.
Come build a rewarding, meaningful career working with the best and brightest people in technology at Canonical, a growing international software company. As a part of our team, you will combine software development skills with software and infrastructure delivery experience.
What the role entails
- Build automated, highly reliable image delivery, testing and publication pipelines
- Design, build and integrate new features and enhancements into Ubuntu that will support users of Ubuntu in public clouds
- Collaborate proactively with a distributed team
- Write high quality code to create new features
- Design and architect complex new systems and integrations with the clouds
- Debug issues and produce high quality code to fix them
- Review code produced by other engineers and participate in design discussions
- Work from home with global travel 2 to 4 weeks for internal and external events
- Engage with many other teams at Canonical, as well as the open source community and commercial partners
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 and are passionate, enterprising, thoughtful, and self-motivated
- You have a Bachelor's or equivalent in Computer Science, STEM or similar degree
- You have practical experience with public clouds
- You have interest and experience with at least 3 of the following: containers (Docker, Kubernetes, etc.), DevOps automation, open source projects, APIs, Linux systems administration, Python packaging, cloud-based applications
- At least some experience in Python software development on Linux
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 recognise outstanding performance. In addition to base pay, we offer a performance-driven annual bonus. 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
- Employee Assistance Programme
- 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 on a daily basis. 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. Canonical has been a remote-first company since its 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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