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Engineering Manager- Ceph & Distributed Storage
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- Salary
- Undisclosed
- Department
- Software Engineering
- Employment
- Full Time
- Experience
- Senior
- Published
- Apply before
- 22 Nov 2026
- Listing views
- 29
- Application actions
- 0
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The role, at a glance.
Canonical is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead a globally distributed team building software-defined storage solutions centered on Ceph. The role combines people leadership, technical direction, architecture oversight, and direct engineering contribution across Linux-based scale-out storage systems. The manager will coach engineers, establish delivery schedules, promote agile practices, and align work with internal and external stakeholders. Candidates need a strong software engineering background, ideally in Python and C++, together with hands-on production experience operating Ceph or comparable distributed storage clusters. The position is home-based across the Americas or EMEA and includes global travel of up to 20% for events.
Role DNA
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Pace & Pressure
4/5Autonomy Level
5/5Communication Load
5/5Salary analysis
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Core skills
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Sample interview questions
I establish clear reliability, scalability, and operability objectives, then translate them into an outcome-based roadmap. I pair architectural reviews with measurable operational signals such as availability, recovery time, latency, capacity efficiency, and incident trends, while ensuring engineers own meaningful areas of the system.
I would begin by understanding the most common installation, upgrade, monitoring, and recovery failure modes. I would prioritize automation, opinionated defaults, health checks, actionable alerts, documented runbooks, and safe upgrade paths, validating improvements through real user feedback and repeatable integration testing.
I reserve time for architecture, high-risk technical decisions, and unblockers while avoiding becoming the implementation bottleneck. I use regular one-to-ones, clear ownership, feedback, and growth plans to help engineers make decisions independently and increase the team's overall technical capacity.
I use decomposition, engineering estimates, explicit assumptions, and risk identification rather than fixed-date optimism. I review progress through short feedback loops, adjust scope or sequencing when evidence changes, and communicate trade-offs early to stakeholders.
I would define shared standards for design review, automated testing, code review, documentation, incident learning, and release readiness. Consistent asynchronous communication, transparent decision records, and regular team touchpoints help maintain alignment while allowing engineers across time zones to work effectively.
About this role.
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 an Engineering Manager for Ceph & Distributed Storage. The world creates more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day! We want to help teams to store data in open source storage on commodity hardware – safely, cheaply and simply.
Our goal is to make Ceph easy to install, manage and use – from large enterprise data center installations to half-rack edge sites. We believe that distributed storage shouldn’t be hard – and to keep up with the increasing data storage demands, it needs to be easier than ever before. We have a range of tools to bring to bear on the problem, and we’re excited to make distributed Ceph easy enough that everyone does it.
As an engineering manager at Canonical you must be technically strong, but your responsibility is to run an effective team and develop the colleagues you manage. You are expected to help them grow as engineers, do important work, do it outstandingly well, find professional and personal satisfaction, and work well with colleagues and community. Technical leadership experience and a background in software engineering are necessary prerequisites for this role. You will be expected to lead, challenge, and develop strong engineers, positively influence the culture, facilitate technical delivery, and work with your team on strategy and execution. You will be responsible for sound software architecture and best practices in software quality, testing and documentation.
What you’ll do
- You will lead a team building a Ceph focused software defined storage solution
- You will build and manage a globally distributed team of engineers
- You’ll develop your team through coaching, mentoring and feedback
- You will demonstrate sound engineering principles by directly contributing toward your team’s goals
- Set reasonable schedules based on considered estimates, with feedback loops for improvement
- Set and manage expectations with other engineering teams and external stakeholders
- Advance modern, agile software development practices
- Maintain a culture of quality and engineering excellence
- Grow a healthy, collaborative engineering culture in line with the company values
- Be an active part of the leadership team and collaborate with other leaders in the organisation
- Work from home with global travel up to 20% for internal and external events
Who you are
- You have a software engineering background, preferably with Python and C++ experience
- You have experience operating scale out storage clusters on Linux in production environments, preferably with Ceph
- You love embracing new technologies and pushing the boundaries of what is possibleYou love developing and growing people and have a track record of doing it
- You have an interest in building products that improve how people operate software and infrastructure everywhere
- You are knowledgeable and passionate about software development
- You have experience in leading, managing, coaching and mentoring software developers towards delivering timely, high quality software together
- You have solid experience working in an agile development environment
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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