Observability Engineering Manager

Canonical; London; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading software company in London is seeking an Observability Engineering Manager to lead their engineering team. The role requires expertise in Linux and facilitating team productivity and growth. Experience with open-source software development is a significant advantage. The position also involves regular travel for collaboration and team-building events. This is a great opportunity for those passionate about technology and open source.

Benefits

Personal learning and development budget

Annual compensation review

Team Member Assistance Program

Maternity and paternity leave

Opportunity to travel to meet colleagues

Qualifications

• Proven track record of professional experience of software delivery.
• Experience in open source development is preferable.
• Willingness to travel up to 4 times a year for internal events.

Responsibilities

• Manage a distributed team of engineers and its observability portfolio.
• Conduct one-on-one meetings and measure team health indicators.
• Review code produced by other engineers to maintain quality.

Skills

Fluent in English

Excellent interpersonal skills

Experience with Linux

Software delivery experience

Curiosity and flexibility

Strong presentation skills

Education

Exceptional academic track record

Tools

Linux

Go (nice to have)

Job description

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Observability Engineering Manager, London

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Client:

Canonical

Location:

London, United Kingdom

Job Category:

Other

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EU work permit required:

Yes

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Job Reference:

c1303c85beb3

Job Views:

7

Posted:

12.08.2025

Expiry Date:

26.09.2025

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Job Description:

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 + 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 Observability Engineering Manager who will lead the development of the distributed tracing or service mesh products as part of our Observability group.

Engineering managers at Canonical are always coders who are able to review and lead both architecture and code. They should also be astute judges of character, and comfortable setting expectations and holding colleagues accountable to them.

We are building an observability stack that is easy to deploy and operate on Kubernetes. This is part of a broader initiative to deliver the world's best suite of open source tools, where we provide deep integration and automation for best-of-breed open source offerings that cover metrics, logging, telemetry, alerting, tracing and profiling. Our goal is to make observability tools integral and pervasive across software practices .

Our implementation of Kubernetes operators is opinionated, resilient, and scalable, providing deep insights out of the box. The user experience is polished and seamless for the end-users, and its administrators will enjoy smooth, lightweight Day 1 and Day 2 operations. We are excited to be improving the state of the art for open-source observability.

This is an exciting opportunity for a software engineer passionate about open source software, Linux, Kubernetes, and Observability. Build a rewarding, meaningful career working with the best and brightest people in technology at Canonical, the growing international software company behind Ubuntu.

As an Engineering Manager at Canonical, you must be technically strong, but your main responsibility is to run an effective team and develop the colleagues you manage. You will develop and review code as a leader, but know that the best way to improve the product is to ensure that the whole team is focused, productive and unblocked. You are expected to help them grow as engineers, do meaningful work, do it outstandingly well, find professional and personal satisfaction, and work well with colleagues and the community. You will also be expected to be a positive influence on culture, facilitate technical delivery, and regularly reflect with your team on strategy and execution. You will collaborate closely with other Engineering Managers, product managers, and architects, producing an engineering roadmap with ambitious and achievable goals.

We expect Engineering Managers to be fluent in the programming language, architecture, and components that their team uses. Code reviews and architectural leadership are part of the job. The commitment to healthy engineering practices, documentation, quality and performance optimisation is as important, as is the requirement for fair and clear management, and the obligation to ensure a high-performing team.

Location: This role can be home based in the EMEA or Americas regions.

The role entails

• Manage a distributed team of engineers and its observability portfolio
• Organize and lead the team’s processes in order to help it achieve its objectives
• Conduct one-on-one meetings with team members
• Identify and measure team health indicators
• Interact with a vibrant community
• Review code produced by other engineers
• Attend conferences to represent Canonical and its Observability Stack

What we are looking for in you

• An exceptional academic track record from both high school and university
• A proven track record of professional experience of software delivery
• Professional software development experience, preferably with a track record in open source
• Willingness to travel up to 4 times a year for internal events
• Professional written and spoken English
• Experience with Linux (Debian or Ubuntu preferred)
• Excellent interpersonal skills, curiosity, flexibility, and accountability
• Passion, thoughtfulness, and self-motivation
• Excellent communication and presentation skills
• Result-oriented, with a personal drive to meet commitments

Nice-to-have skills

• Experience as an engineering manager, with a track record of building great, high performance teams
• A working knowledge of Go
• Interest and experience with container technologies
• A proven understanding of the importance of observability and monitoring for keeping software running smoothly
• Experience designing and implementing observability solutions

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, 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