About this role.
This role is for a Site Reliability / Gitops Engineer at Canonical, a leading open source company. The position involves defining infrastructure as code, automating operations, and improving resilience of cloud services. You will work with a global team to manage IT production services used by millions of Ubuntu users. The job requires deep experience with Linux, IaC, CI/CD, and distributed systems. It offers remote work in any timezone and the opportunity to contribute to open source projects.
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Cover letter sample
I am writing to express my strong interest in the Site Reliability / Gitops Engineer position at Canonical. With extensive experience in Linux operations, infrastructure as code, and CI/CD pipelines, I am excited about the opportunity to drive automation in a globally distributed team.
My background includes designing scalable cloud infrastructure using tools like Terraform and Kubernetes, implementing monitoring with Prometheus and Grafana, and collaborating with development teams to improve service reliability. I thrive in fast-paced environments and have a passion for open source.
I am particularly drawn to Canonical's mission and the chance to work on systems used by millions of Ubuntu users worldwide. I am confident that my skills in GitOps and automation can contribute to the IS team's success.
Sample interview questions
I have extensive experience with tools like Terraform and Ansible, and I use Git as the single source of truth for both application and infrastructure configuration. I implement CI/CD pipelines that automatically apply changes after code review and testing, ensuring consistency and rollback capabilities.
I believe in a blameless culture and automation. I set up monitoring and alerting to detect issues early, and I use runbooks and playbooks for common incidents. I also participate in post-mortems to improve systems. In a distributed team, clear communication and handover processes are key.
At my previous company, our database faced high load during peak hours. I analyzed performance metrics, identified bottlenecks, and implemented read replicas and caching. I also optimized queries and used connection pooling. The solution improved throughput by 40% and reduced latency.
I follow open source communities, attend webinars, and contribute to projects on GitHub. I read blogs from industry experts and participate in online forums like Stack Overflow and Reddit. I also experiment with new tools in my home lab.
I would use Kubernetes features like Deployments with rolling updates, ConfigMaps, and Secrets for configuration. I'd set resource limits, liveness/readiness probes, and horizontal autoscaling. For resilience, I'd deploy across multiple zones, use pod disruption budgets, and implement a service mesh for traffic management.
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 Site Reliability / Gitops Engineer to our Information Systems (IS) team. This role is an opportunity for an “automation-first” 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 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.
Location: This role is available remotely in any timezone.
As a Site Reliability / Gitops Engineer engineer you will
- 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
- Develop new features and improve the resilience and scalability of the existing cloud and container portfolio at Canonical
- 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
- Collaborate with development teams to design service architecture, documentation, playbooks, policies and operational procedures
- 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 deep experience of, and knowledge to define operations in code, using version control, peer review and CI/CD to roll out changes both to applications and infrastructure
- Strong modern engineering background (peer-review, unit testing, SCM, CI/CD, Agile)
- Python software development experience, with large projects
- 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
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.
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.
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