Senior Site Reliability / Gitops 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
65 / 5

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 a Senior Site Reliability / Gitops Engineer to join their Information Systems team. This role focuses on driving automation and Gitops practices, defining infrastructure as code, and maintaining production services used by over 60 million Ubuntu users. The engineer will collaborate globally, design services as products, and provide critical feedback to developers. Ideal candidates have experience with Linux, IaC, Python, and a product mindset. The position offers uninterrupted development time and the opportunity to work with cutting-edge open source technologies.

Role DNA

Job Complexity
Easy Hard
Pace & Pressure
Relaxed Fast-paced
Autonomy Level
Guided Full Ownership
Communication Load
Independent Highly Collaborative
AI Insight The role requires a senior level of expertise in Linux, automation, and cloud technologies, along with leadership and collaboration across global teams, making it challenging but not the highest level due to clear scope.

Salary Analysis

Median Highly Competitive
$165,000
US Market
$120k – 200k
0 $220k
AI Insight The offered salary is competitive for a senior SRE role in the US market, with a median of $165,000. This aligns with industry standards for experienced engineers with Gitops and IaC skills.

Dear Hiring Team,

I am writing to express my interest in the Senior Site Reliability / Gitops Engineer position at Canonical. With over 8 years of experience in site reliability engineering and a strong focus on automation and Gitops practices, I am excited about the opportunity to drive operational excellence for Ubuntu services. My background includes extensive work with infrastructure as code, Python development, and leading automation initiatives across global teams.

In my previous role at a large tech company, I designed and implemented CI/CD pipelines and observability stacks that improved system reliability by 30%. I am passionate about open source and have contributed to projects like Prometheus and Kubernetes. I thrive in distributed teams and am eager to bring my product mindset to help Canonical deliver robust services.

Thank you for considering my application. I look forward to the possibility of contributing to Canonical's mission.

How would you design a Gitops workflow for managing a large-scale Kubernetes cluster?
I would use a tool like ArgoCD or Flux to sync the cluster state from a Git repository, incorporating pull requests for changes, automated testing, and gradual rollouts. I'd integrate with CI/CD pipelines to validate configurations and ensure rollback capabilities.
Describe a time you automated a manual operational process. What was the impact?
At my previous job, I automated the process of provisioning new environments using Terraform and Ansible. This reduced provisioning time from 2 days to 30 minutes and eliminated human errors, leading to faster development cycles.
How do you approach monitoring and alerting for a distributed system?
I use a combination of metrics, logs, and traces. I define SLIs and SLOs, then set up Prometheus for metrics, Grafana for dashboards, and Elasticsearch for logs. Alerting is configured to minimize noise by using alert fatigue reduction techniques like grouping and prioritization.
Explain the concept of 'product mindset' in infrastructure. How would you apply it?
A product mindset means treating infrastructure as a product with internal customers, focusing on usability, reliability, and continuous improvement. I would document services, gather feedback from users, and iterate on features like self-service provisioning and clear SLAs.
What is your experience with Python for automation, and can you provide an example?
I have used Python extensively for scripting automation tasks, such as writing a tool to manage cloud resources via APIs. For instance, I built a Python script that automated the cleanup of unused AWS volumes, saving the company 15% on storage costs.

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 Senior Site Reliability / Gitops Engineer to our Information Systems (IS) team. This role is an opportunity for an “automation-first” senior technologist with a passion for Linux to build a career with Canonical and drive the success with those leveraging Ubuntu and open source products. If you have experience of IT operations automation, Infrastructure as Code and a passion for technology, then you will enjoy working with some of the best people in the industry at Canonical.

Job Summary

The IS team at Canonical supports and maintains all of Canonical’s IT production services. The team is in charge of running services used by over 60 million Ubuntu users.

As an Senior SRE & Gitops engineer you’ll be in a unique position to drive operations automation to the next level, both in our own private clouds as well as in the public clouds. We do this by utilizing the best of open source infrastructure as code software, software development practices such as CI/CD pipelines, and Canonical’s leading products for software operation automation.

In addition to defining the infrastructure as code, you will improve Canonical products and the open-source technologies they’re based on by providing critical feedback to developers on how their products operate at scale. This is done by submitting bugs (and sometimes writing pull requests) and collaborating on design and implementations with other teams within the company.

You’ll be part of a global team of SREs that work together and support each other to provide the best possible services to our company, Canonical’s customers and the Ubuntu Community.

As a Senior Site Reliability / Gitops Engineer you will

  • Drive the development of automation, Gitops in your team as an embedded tech lead
  • Closely collaborate with the IS architect to align your solutions with the IS architecture vision
  • Design and architect services that IS can offer to the organization as products
  • Apply your experience of IaC to develop infrastructure as code practice within IS by constantly increasing automation and improving IaC processes
  • Automate software operations for re-usability and consistency across private and public clouds, taking into consideration the complexities of distributed systems
  • Maintain operational responsibility for all of Canonical’s core services, networks, and infrastructure
  • Develop skills in troubleshooting, capacity planning, and performance investigation, Setting up, maintaining and using observability tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, and Elasticsearch; design, implement and maintain monitoring and alerting for various systems and services
  • Provide assistance and work with globally distributed engineering, operations, and support peers
  • Be given uninterrupted development time to focus on larger projects and automation of manual tasks
  • Share your experience, know-how and best practices with other team members in design sessions, mentorship and ‘doing work together’
  • Carry final responsibility for time-critical escalations

What we are looking for in you

  • A modern view on hosting architecture, driven by infrastructure as code across both private and public clouds.
  • A product mindset thriving to develop products rather than solutions.
  • Python software development experience, with large projects
  • Experience working with Kubernetes or other container orchestration systems.
  • Proven exposure to manage and deploy cloud infrastructure with code.
  • Practical knowledge of Linux networking, routing, and firewalls
  • Affinity with various forms of Linux storage, from Ceph to Databases
  • Hands-on experience administering enterprise Linux servers
  • Extensive knowledge of cloud computing concepts and technologies
  • Bachelor’s degree or greater, preferably in computer science or related engineering field
  • Able to communicate clearly and effectively in English over email, chat, video or voice calls and in-person
  • Motivated and able to troubleshoot from kernel to web, and willing to ask others when appropriate
  • A willingness to be flexible and able to learn new things quickly
  • Be inspired by the needs of fast-changing environments
  • Happy to work within distributed teams
  • Be passionate and familiarized about open-source, especially Ubuntu or Debian

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 2,000 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

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 of software. 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. Most colleagues at Canonical have worked from home since our 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.

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 

 

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