Remote opportunity at
CanonicalPerformance Engineer - Open Source
This is a full-time, remote Performance Engineer position at Canonical, created as part of a dedicated career track for people who care deeply about how fast,…
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About This Role
This is a full-time, remote Performance Engineer position at Canonical, created as part of a dedicated career track for people who care deeply about how fast, correct and efficient software is. Performance engineers are being placed in each engineering group, which means the work can sit anywhere from kernel and server components to desktop software and web front ends. The person in this role measures, analyses and tunes software behaviour,…
Job Description
This is a full-time, remote Performance Engineer position at Canonical, created as part of a dedicated career track for people who care deeply about how fast, correct and efficient software is. Performance engineers are being placed in each engineering group, which means the work can sit anywhere from kernel and server components to desktop software and web front ends.
The person in this role measures, analyses and tunes software behaviour, and thinks carefully about which metrics matter and how to prove that results are right. Beyond their own project, they are expected to lift the skills, tooling and working habits of the wider team. Engineers in this track may rotate to a different product every two years so that fresh perspectives reach each group. A central performance engineering group builds shared dashboards, measurement frameworks and analysis methods.
Canonical reports more than 1000 colleagues spread across over 70 countries. The posting is open to engineers whose main language is C, C++, Rust, Go, Python, Java or Dart, and to those drawn to kernel work, hardware or CPU design.
Responsibilities
- Improve speed and correctness for a named project
- Partner with colleagues and the open source community worldwide
- Create common tools for measuring, analysing and reporting performance
- Teach teammates performance-aware design and measurement habits
- Strengthen test harnesses and their supporting pipelines
- Study systems and code to judge how well they perform and scale
- Review code and technical design proposals
Requirements
- Excellent grades through school and university
- Undergraduate degree in computing, mathematics or physics
- Self-started projects that measure or improve speed, efficiency or correctness
- Fluent written and spoken English, with polished presenting skills
- Hands-on Linux experience, with Debian or Ubuntu an advantage
- Ability to travel abroad up to twice a year for multi-day company events
Qualifications
- Understanding of CPU caches, registers, vector instructions and assembly code
- Knowledge of how the kernel schedules work and uses hardware acceleration
- Experience tuning compilers or runtimes such as Go, Python, the JVM or Node.js
- Database tuning skills covering query plans, indexes and tracing
- Working familiarity with eBPF, flame graphs and suites like Phoronix Test Suite
Core Skills
Benefits
- Mostly remote setup, with in-person team sprints twice yearly
- USD 2,000 yearly for learning and development
- Pay reviewed each year, with recognition awards
- Paid holidays, along with parental leave for mothers and fathers
- Employee assistance programme
- Trips to new places to meet colleagues face to face
- Priority Pass card and upgraded seats on long-haul company travel
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers are based only on the employer’s listing; where it doesn’t say, neither do we.
Is this Performance Engineer role remote?
Yes. The posting lists the role as remote, and Canonical says it has teams in every time zone.
What education does the posting ask for?
It asks for an undergraduate degree in computing, mathematics or physics.
What is the employment type?
The role is full-time. The posting does not state a salary; it says pay depends on location, experience and performance.
Does the role involve travel?
Yes. Candidates should be willing to travel internationally up to twice yearly for company gatherings lasting up to two weeks.
Sample Interview Questions
AI-generated questions tailored to this specific role — a preview of the full practice set.