Alliances Field Engineer

Remote from
🌐 Anywhere
Annual salary
Undisclosed
Salary information is not provided for this position. Check our Salary Directory to estimate the average compensation for similar roles.
Employment type
Full Time,
Job posted
Apply before
21 Aug 2026
Experience level
Senior
Views / Applies
217 / 14

About Canonical Ltd.

Trusted open source for enterprises

Actively Hiring
Verified job posting
This job post has been manually reviewed for authenticity and compliance.

AI Summary

Canonical is hiring an Alliances Field Engineer to support major partners like Intel, Nvidia, and Google in adopting Ubuntu and open source technologies. The role involves architecting cloud solutions, designing reference architectures, and conducting workshops. It requires deep expertise in Linux, Kubernetes, and cloud-native tools, with strong communication skills for customer-facing engagements. This is a remote, global position with a focus on enterprise adoption of open source platforms.

Role DNA

Job Complexity
Easy Hard
Pace & Pressure
Relaxed Fast-paced
Autonomy Level
Guided Full Ownership
Communication Load
Independent Highly Collaborative
AI Insight The job is described as 'the hardest job at Canonical' because field engineers must have expert-level knowledge across the entire open source stack and respond to any customer query, making it highly challenging.

Salary Analysis

Median Highly Competitive
$150,000
US Market
$120k – 180k
0 $198k
AI Insight No salary was specified for this position. Based on US market data for similar senior field engineering roles in open source and cloud, the estimated median salary is around $150,000, with a typical range of $120,000 to $180,000, which is competitive for the required expertise.

I am writing to express my strong interest in the Alliances Field Engineer position at Canonical. With extensive experience in Linux, Kubernetes, and cloud-native architectures, I have successfully designed and implemented solutions for enterprise customers and partners. My background includes architecting OpenStack and Ceph deployments, building reference architectures, and delivering technical workshops.

I thrive in fast-paced, collaborative environments and have a proven ability to articulate complex technical concepts to diverse stakeholders. At your company, I would leverage my expertise to help partners like Intel and Google adopt Ubuntu and drive innovation.

I am particularly drawn to Canonical's mission of advancing open source globally and its distributed work model. I am confident my skills in automation, troubleshooting, and partner engagement align perfectly with this role.

I look forward to the opportunity to discuss how I can contribute to your team.

How would you design a joint solution with a hardware partner to deploy Kubernetes on their infrastructure?
First, I'd understand the partner's hardware specs and customer use cases. Then, I'd design a reference architecture using Ubuntu, Kubernetes, and Ceph for storage, ensuring high availability and scalability. I'd validate the solution with the partner's engineering team and publish it as a joint reference architecture.
Describe a time you had to troubleshoot a complex issue involving multiple open source components. What was your approach?
I once debugged a performance issue in an OpenStack deployment with Ceph storage. I systematically checked each layer: network latency, storage IOPS, and compute resources. Using logs and monitoring tools, I identified a misconfiguration in Ceph's CRUSH map. I corrected it and documented the fix for future reference.
How do you stay updated with the rapidly evolving open source landscape?
I follow key projects on GitHub, attend community meetups and conferences, and participate in online forums. I also allocate time each week to test new releases and features in my home lab.
Can you explain how you would handle a partner who is resistant to adopting Ubuntu due to familiarity with another OS?
I would listen to their concerns and identify specific benefits of Ubuntu, such as security updates, LTS releases, and ecosystem support. I'd provide case studies and a proof-of-concept to demonstrate ease of migration and long-term cost savings.
What experience do you have with automation tools, and how have you used them in past roles?
I have extensive experience with Ansible and Terraform for infrastructure as code. In my last role, I automated the deployment of a Kubernetes cluster on bare metal using Ansible playbooks, reducing setup time from days to hours.

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 1000+ colleagues in 70+ countries and very few roles based in offices. 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 Alliances Field Engineer to help our biggest partners (companies like Intel, Nvidia, Google, Dell, HP, Accenture, Tata and the like) understand and embrace our open source platform for themselves and their customers.

Our worldwide field engineering team apply expert insights to real-world customer problems, enabling the enterprise adoption of Ubuntu, OpenStack, Kubernetes, AI/MLOps and a wide range of associated technologies. We are experts in the whole open source stack, from kernel to desktop, from cloud to the edge. Our team is also interested in business problems – building things reliably, efficiently and cost-effectively, and we have to learn to speak the language of our customers and their industries.

We help global companies embrace public and private cloud infrastructure, cloud native operations, and open source applications. For this team we are looking for several Alliances Engineers to support OEM (hardware manufacturers), GSI (global system integrators), ISV (independent software vendors), Channel partners and Public Cloud alliance partners. You will support various alliances and partners of Canonical to adopt our products and technologies, help business leaders to define joint go-to-market programs with partners from the technical standpoint.

We often say that our field engineers have ‘the hardest job at Canonical’ because customers can ask about any aspect of our solutions and products and expect a thoughtful, well-informed answer. We always want to do the best thing for our partners and customers, regardless of our company interests, and field engineers are the people we trust to ensure that is true.

Location: This is a home-based role, we are hiring worldwide.

What your day will look like

  • Understand Ubuntu, Linux, networking and services in real-world environments
  • Architect cloud infrastructure solutions like Kubernetes, Kubeflow, OpenStack, Ceph, and Spark either On-Premises or in Public Cloud (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud)
  • Architect and integrate popular open source software such as PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Kafka, Cassandra and NGINX
  • Help partners to offer and architect joint solutions utilizing Canonical’s technologies on top of the public clouds and in the data center
  • Design and publish joint Reference Architectures and perform technical validations with various partners
  • Prepare and run onboarding sessions/workshops with various partners’ teams to promote Canonical products and solutions

If you have a passion for the latest open source technologies, cloud-native development, data center technologies such as Kubernetes and computer networking, you will love the Alliances Engineer role at Canonical.

What we are looking for in you 

  • Extensive experience with Linux (Ubuntu preferred), Kubernetes, Ceph, software automation
  • Experience designing and implementing solutions on top of public or private clouds
  • Python and bash understanding, troubleshooting skills
  • Fluent written and spoken English
  • Excellent communication and presentation skills
  • High motivation, ability to multi-task and follow-up reliably on commitments
  • Interest in customer-facing engagement, including pitching, demonstrating and understanding customer environment and needs
  • Interest in new technologies like LXD, Juju and Snaps
  • Ability to travel globally up to 30% of the time
  • Degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics or related technical field experience

What we offer you

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 – we’ve been working remotely since 2004!
  • 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 from your team and others
  • Priority Pass for travel and travel upgrades for long haul company events

About Canonical

Canonical is a pioneering tech firm that is 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.​ Work at Canonical is a step into the future, and will challenge you to think differently, work smarter, learn new skills, and raise your game. Canonical provides a unique window into the world of 21st-century digital business.

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.

 

#LI-Remote

 

Apply now >

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