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Global Head of Performance Engineering

Home based - Americas, EMEA

We are looking for a worldwide leader in software performance, both to challenge Canonical engineering teams and to raise the bar for open source performance globally.

This is an opportunity - perhaps a once in a lifetime opportunity - to bring fresh ideas to software performance. Our scope is almost unlimited. Open source spans the full spectrum of software - from the kernel and RTOS all the way to the web, for single thread software on tiny machines to massively parallel distributed systems, the challenges of performance are as diverse as the kinds of code we touch.

In the minds of customers and users, Canonical doesn't just represent Ubuntu - it represents a pathway to all of open source. As leaders in the community, we can shape standards, expectations and patterns which are noticed and adopted widely. Our six month release cadence has become something of a standard. Our two year LTS cycle - even the term LTS itself - has also been widely adopted in the open source community. We'd like to do the same now for software performance.

We consider performance and efficiency to be closely related. We want machines running open source to be greener than any possible alternative, and performance engineering is a key part of that equation. We also want businesses to get answers faster, users to spend less time waiting, RAM to go further, older machines to be useful for longer. All of this rests on our ability to inspire, cajole and measure performance engineering both inside of Canonical and in the wider open source ecosystem.

This is not an academic role, nor one for the fainthearted. We expect to see demonstrable changes in teams and metrics as a result of this appointment, and we will only support a leader who can attract a global external following to their ideas. We only have one space for such a leader, and we will only keep someone in role who we think is the best, and most deserving, of the opportunity.

Your role will cover the whole Canonical product engineering organization, contributing at both high and detailed levels to help teams enhance the performance of their products. Applicants to this role should have a proven track record of engineering management, leadership, excellence, and consistency in multiple areas, projects, or teams. They will need to be able to help teams set and measure appropriate metrics, and judge management ability to move constructively in the right direction on those metrics. They will need to be able to do this with teams working on vastly different kinds of software, and they will need to make arguments that are compelling and inspiring and practical to implement for engineers who do not work for Canonical and are not accountable to us.

We want to push the boundaries of performance. This role is important not just for bragging rights to speed, but also for the impact that it can have on global energy use in machines touched by Canonical's work and open source more broadly. The ideal candidate will have significant experience in performance engineering, will have a history of data-driven decision-making, will be an articulate communicator, will be comfortable presenting plans and results to management, and will have prior experience leading successful projects and teams.

What you’ll do

Collaborate proactively with multiple distributed teams
Help engineering teams establish and achieve software performance goals
Establish consistency in of performance measurement, observation, and tooling
Contribute code to streamline performance and remove bottlenecks
Evaluate the performance rigour of engineering teams
Write specifications and understand performance trade-offs and risks
Work to reduce complexity
Influence others and represent technical insight to customers and other engineers
Help debug performance issues and produce high quality code to fix them
Provide code reviews for performance-related patches
Spend a significant amount of time mentoring others and providing cross-team input
Work from home with global travel 4 to 8 weeks for internal and external events

Who you are

You have a long history of performance engineering on a variety of projects
You have a track record of public leadership and commentary
You can represent Canonical on software performance externally
You have experience leading successful projects and teams
You have engineering management experience
You are an articulate communicator
You love technology and working with brilliant people
You follow industry trends and new technologies
You understand and value how you do what you do, as well as what you do
You have strong collaboration and influencing skills
You are curious, flexible, articulate, and accountable
You value soft skills and are passionate, enterprising, thoughtful, and self-motivated
You have a Bachelor’s or equivalent in Computer Science, STEM or similar degree

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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Global Head of Performance Engineering

Home based - Americas, EMEA

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First Name Last Name Email Phone Resume Cover Letter Describe your software performance optimisation experience, from kernel to application and web Describe your experience of public leadership and commentary - with tweets, blogs, writing, videos or speaking Which companies have an outstanding approach to software performance engineering, and what do you like about their work? What ideas do you have to raise the standard of software performance in the open source ecosystem broadly? Are you due to graduate soon, or have you graduated from university in the past two years?

Tell us if you are a recent graduate, or if you should graduate from university this year. We have certain roles which are open to recent of soon-to-be graduates.

What time zone are you in? What was your bachelor's university degree result, or expected result if you have not yet graduated? Please include the grading system to help us understand your result e.g. ‘85 out of 100’, ‘2:1 (Grading system: first class, 2:1, 2:2, third class)’ or ‘GPA score of 3.8/4.0 (predicted)’. We have hired outstanding individuals who did not attend or complete university. If this describes you, please continue with your application and enter ‘no degree’.

Universities around the world score degrees in different ways. Please indicate your result, or expected result if you are close to graduation, along with information about the grading system.

How did you perform in mathematics at high school? How did you perform in your native language at high school? We expect all colleagues to meet in person 2-4 times a year, at internal company events lasting between 1-2 weeks. We try to pick new and interesting locations that will likely require international travel and entry requirement visas and vaccinations. Are you willing and able to commit to this?

Please note that if you require any accommodation for travel that relates to a physical disability please do let us know during your hiring process and we will be happy to discuss your requirements further.

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