Travel Operations Specialist

Canonical publishes Ubuntu, the Linux distribution underpinning much of the world's public cloud, AI, and IoT infrastructure. The company is founder-led, profitable, and genuinely distributed: 1,200+ colleagues across 75+ countries, with very few office-based roles. Most people have worked from home since Canonical began in 2004. Teams gather in person two to four times a year in varied locations worldwide.

The role

This position sits on the Business Services team and exists to get colleagues and guests from all over the world to company meetings and industry events without friction. The team sets travel policy, advises on travel decisions, responds to travel emergencies, and manages supplier relationships.

There is a neat symmetry here for anyone drawn to location-independent work: the job is helping a globally scattered workforce move around the planet, done from your own home, wherever that happens to be.

Canonical is explicit that it is not screening for deep travel-industry experience. They are looking for strong organisers and communicators who plan ahead, take responsibility, and want to keep improving how things run.

Responsibilities

• Handling travel queries and issues raised by colleagues
• Working with the wider business services team on company and industry event planning
• Holding travel vendors accountable for service quality
• Checking invoices for accurate charges, and chasing timely payments, credits and refunds
• Monitoring trends, spend, emissions and policy compliance
• Tracking unused tickets, credits and airline points

What they are looking for

• Strong academic results at school and university
• A degree in a business or technical subject
• Excellent communication skills
• Reliability and accountability
• Self-awareness and thoughtfulness
• Willingness to travel up to four times a year for company events lasting up to two weeks
• Ability to pick up new technology and software quickly

Benefits

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

Three things to know before applying

Canonical prohibits AI in the application. The form requires you to confirm: using AI or other generated content will disqualify your application. Every written answer must be your own words. This is one of the strictest positions on the board and it is enforced at submission.

The screening is unusually academic. The application asks how you performed in high-school mathematics and in your native language, with ranking bands from "top 50% at school" up to "top 0.01% in the region," and asks you to justify those answers with reference to national scoring systems or exam results. It also asks for your degree result and grading system. Candidates without a degree are still invited to apply and can enter "no degree," but be ready for this style of assessment.

Travel is mandatory, not optional. The application asks you to confirm you can attend internal events two to four times a year, lasting one to two weeks, in locations likely to require international travel, visas and vaccinations.

A note on location

The listing header states EMEA, while the body text describes the location as worldwide home-based except where Canonical has offices such as London, Taipei and Beijing. Because the header is the more specific and restrictive statement, this is filed as EMEA. Candidates outside that region who are otherwise a strong fit should confirm scope with Canonical directly rather than assuming either reading.