About this role.
Canonical seeks a GitOps Engineering Manager to lead a remote DevOps team supporting Ubuntu and managed services. The role combines hands-on technical leadership with strategic process improvement, requiring expertise in Linux, Kubernetes, infrastructure as code, and cloud operations. You will mentor engineers, drive agile practices, and ensure SLAs for global deployments. This is a fully distributed role open to candidates in APAC and EMEA, with twice-yearly in-person sprints. The ideal candidate has a strong academic record and proven experience managing high-performance DevOps teams.
Role DNA
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Job Complexity
5/5Pace & Pressure
4/5Autonomy Level
5/5Communication Load
5/5Salary analysis
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Core skills
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Cover letter sample
Dear Hiring Manager,
I am writing to express my strong interest in the GitOps Engineering Manager position at Canonical. With over a decade of experience in DevOps and cloud-native operations, including managing distributed teams and implementing infrastructure as code, I am excited about the opportunity to contribute to Canonical's mission of pioneering model-driven operations.
In my previous role, I led a remote DevOps team responsible for Kubernetes and multi-cloud deployments, achieving a 99.99% SLA compliance while reducing deployment times by 70% through GitOps practices. I thrive in environments that require both strategic leadership and hands-on technical expertise, and I am passionate about mentoring engineers to reach their full potential.
Canonical's fully distributed model and focus on open-source innovation deeply resonate with my professional values. I am eager to bring my experience in agile methodologies, team health metrics, and large-scale infrastructure to your team, and to help raise the bar for managed services. Thank you for your consideration; I look forward to discussing how I can drive impact at Canonical.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
Sample interview questions
I have been using GitOps for the past five years, primarily with ArgoCD and Flux. In my last role, I migrated our entire deployment pipeline to a GitOps workflow, storing all infrastructure definitions in Git repositories. This reduced configuration drift, improved rollback capabilities, and increased deployment frequency by 40%. I also implemented automated policy checks in CI to ensure all changes meet compliance standards before being applied to clusters.
I establish clear communication norms, such as overlapping working hours, async-first documentation, and regular one-on-ones. I also hold weekly team syncs focused on priorities and blockers, and bi-monthly virtual social events to build rapport. To maintain culture, I encourage open feedback, celebrate wins publicly, and ensure every team member understands how their work contributes to the company mission.
In a previous role, our team had a 99.95% SLA for a global SaaS platform. During a major incident caused by a misconfigured network policy, we had to act quickly. I coordinated a cross-functional response, delegating tasks to engineers while managing stakeholder communication. We resolved the issue within 30 minutes, narrowly meeting the SLA. Afterwards, I led a blameless postmortem and implemented automated checks to prevent similar issues, improving our incident response time by 50%.
I would use a combination of quantitative and qualitative metrics: DORA metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, MTTR), team satisfaction surveys, and turnover rates. I would also hold regular retrospectives to identify pain points. I then prioritize improvements based on impact, such as reducing toil through automation or refining agile processes. I believe in continuous improvement and would regularly review these metrics with the team to ensure progress.
I dedicate time each week to reading CNCF blogs, attending webinars, and participating in open-source communities. I also experiment with new tools in a personal sandbox environment, and I encourage my team to share learnings during demos. For model-driven operations, I follow projects like Juju and Kubernetes operators, and I have implemented operators to automate complex application lifecycle management. Staying hands-on helps me make informed architectural decisions and mentor my team effectively.
Canonical is a leading provider of open-source software and operating systems for 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 more than 80 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 GitOps Engineering Manager aspiring for a world-class devops and gitops engineering management challenge, bringing together operations management, software engineering and product development, and team leadership in a single high-value role. You will need to be a Linux and operations expert, as well as a great manager capable of leading a high-performance team, to excel in this role.
Our mission is to pioneer and prove new and better approaches to large-scale IS. We support Canonical and Ubuntu operations, but we also help shape Canonical’s managed application service offerings, raising the bar on devops and cloud-native operations. We take infra-as-code to the next level, blazing a trail to next-generation model-driven operations. We not only aim to automate every process that underpins our business, we also share that automation as open source packages which others use to drive their own operations.
We work across the full stack, from bare metal to Kubernetes, including cloud and virtualisation. We also work across the full range of infrastructure, from public cloud to private cloud and edge.
We have fully distributed, home-based teams in EMEA, APAC and the Americas. You will lead a team in your time zone, and report to a global director who may not be in your time zone.
Location: This role will be based remotely in the APAC and EMEA region.
The role entails
- Lead your team in daily agile devops practices
- Represent the IS team to stakeholders, customers, and internal teams
- Organize, coordinate and drive internal projects
- Mentor engineers to improve their skills
- Identify and measure team health indicators
- Implement structured engineering and operations processes
- Ensure proper team focus on priorities, milestones, and deliverables
- Work to meet service level agreements with customer deployments around the globe
- Deliver quality managed services in a consistent, timely manner
What we are looking for in you
- Drive and a track record of going above-and-beyond expectations
- Proven experience of software delivery using infrastructure as code
- Proven experience managing devops teams for SAAS or similar offerings
- Understanding of testing methodologies and maintainable code quality
- Technical aptitude for understanding complex distributed systems
- Experience with cloud topologies and technologies
- Ability to travel twice a year, for company events up to two weeks long
- An exceptional academic track record from both high school and university
Nice-to-have skills
- Experience with Ubuntu system administration
- Experience with agile software development methodologies
- Experience working in and managing distributed teams
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
- Employee Assistance Program
- 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 its 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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