Community Engineer (Multiple Roles and Seniority Levels)

Canonical publishes Ubuntu and is one of the largest commercial contributors to open source. The company is founder-led, profitable, and genuinely distributed: 1,200+ colleagues across 75+ countries, with most people working from home since 2004.

One application, several roles

Canonical is building community management at scale and has multiple Community Engineer positions open at different seniority levels. All candidates come through this single entry point, so you apply once rather than picking a specific opening.

What the Community team actually does

The framing here is worth understanding, because it is not a typical developer relations job. The team enables community leaders and participants to get things done, coordinating with Canonical's internal teams and keeping community processes running well.

As the listing puts it, they do not do the community's work — they facilitate it, so that ambitious community members with their own vision of open source can build on what Canonical does and bring their own flavour of Ubuntu into being.

That makes this a role for someone technically capable who is genuinely interested in sustainable community building rather than marketing output.

The work

• Writing high quality content that promotes and supports community initiatives
• Collaborating on solutions to community problems
• Nurturing community contributions to Ubuntu
• Engaging through Discourse, Matrix, social media and conferences
• Representing Ubuntu through speaking engagements at events
• Supporting Canonical teams as they engage with the wider open source ecosystem
• Leading complex, multi-disciplinary programs from conception to launch, working with Developer Relations engineers, technical authors, product managers, marketing, engineering and external partners
• Supporting volunteer developers in the Ubuntu community and helping them build successful tools
• Working from home with global travel of two to four weeks a year, with the option to travel more if you want to

What they are looking for

• Curiosity, flexibility, articulacy and accountability
• Experience with developer tools and open source projects
• A clear public record of accomplishments — talks, blog posts, GitHub and similar
• Interest and experience in some of: Ubuntu Linux kernel or userspace, DevOps, software development, testing and QA, package management, container technology
• Ability to work autonomously and take full ownership of objectives
• Experience working with open source communities and a real understanding of how volunteer contributors operate
• Technical program management experience with strong organisational and interpersonal skills

Also useful

• Community management or developer advocacy experience
• Background as a software developer
• Demonstrable contributions to the Ubuntu community or other open source projects

Benefits

• Distributed work with twice-yearly in-person team sprints
• USD 2,000 personal learning and development budget per year
• Annual compensation review, plus performance-driven bonus or commission
• Recognition rewards, annual holiday leave, maternity and paternity leave
• Employee Assistance Program
• Priority Pass and travel upgrades for long-haul company events

No salary figures are published on this listing.

Three things to know before applying

AI use disqualifies your application. The form requires you to confirm you used only your own words.

Expect academic screening. You will be asked to rank your high-school mathematics and native-language performance and justify it against national scoring systems, plus give your degree result. Candidates without a degree are explicitly welcome and may enter "no degree."

Travel is required. Two to four internal events a year, one to two weeks each, in locations likely to need visas and vaccinations.

Two written answers are mandatory: your past experience with open source community engagement, and public links evidencing it. Canonical is effectively asking for a portfolio here, so an existing public track record matters more than a polished CV. They also publish a guide called "how to get a job at Canonical," linked from the listing, which is worth reading first.