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CanonicalTelco Field Engineering Director
Canonical is hiring a full-time Telco Field Engineering Director to lead its global telco field engineering operation. The director works from home and oversees teams around…
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About This Role
Canonical is hiring a full-time Telco Field Engineering Director to lead its global telco field engineering operation. The director works from home and oversees teams around the world while staying within one main time zone. The telco department is split across APAC, EMEA and AMER, with a regional team in each. The field engineering arm is made up of cloud solution architects who design private and public cloud systems suited…
Job Description
Canonical is hiring a full-time Telco Field Engineering Director to lead its global telco field engineering operation. The director works from home and oversees teams around the world while staying within one main time zone. The telco department is split across APAC, EMEA and AMER, with a regional team in each.
The field engineering arm is made up of cloud solution architects who design private and public cloud systems suited to each customer's workloads. They work with OpenStack, MicroCloud and Ceph on premises, and with Kubernetes, Kubeflow, Spark and PostgreSQL in on-premises or public cloud deployments. Engineers build, test and hand solutions over to support or managed services, and they also join presales talks. As operators and service providers adopt software-defined services, this team helps them do so using open source platforms.
The director leads managers and engineers in presales and professional services, serves customers as a trusted advisor, and sets the direction, focus and delivery approach for the team. Directors are expected to be strong engineers who can debug technical problems and take part in presales conversations. Their greatest impact comes from guiding the whole team rather than from individual technical output.
The ideal person has an in-depth grasp of telco network function virtualisation, telco cloud infrastructure and industry standards, plus practical skills in Linux and networking and a history of developing engineers into managers. Travel can take up to a quarter of working time for events, customer meetings and delivery work.
Responsibilities
- Develop managers and field engineers who work in presales and in professional services
- Help customers with their challenges by championing the technology and acting as a trusted adviser
- Coach and mentor people and give career feedback
- Measure team health and put disciplined engineering practices in place
- Speak for the team and its products to stakeholders, partners and customers
- Champion strong engineering and organisational habits
- Plan goals and projects, and track progress
- Sit on the leadership team and work with fellow leaders
- Contribute to presales work that helps the department meet quarterly targets
Requirements
- Strong command of telco NFV infrastructure, orchestration, VNF management and edge computing, along with CPU pinning, NUMA, SR-IOV and DPDK
- Familiarity with how telco systems are architected and which standards apply
- Working grasp of one telco specialism, such as mobile core (4G/5G), private networks, RAN, voice, IP core, VAS or OSS/BSS
- Working understanding of cloud platforms, including Ceph, OpenStack, Kubernetes, AWS, GCP and Azure
- Hands-on Linux and networking skills
- Presales experience with technical solutions
- Excellent spoken and written English
- Strong track record in growing people
- Experience guiding, developing and advising engineers and managers
- Ability to ensure the team delivers on time and to a high standard
- Outstanding academic background through school and, preferably, university
- Able to travel for up to about a quarter of working time
Qualifications
- Second language such as Spanish or French
- Python skills
- Experience working with outside partners and several internal teams
- Experience feeding stakeholder input into engineering roadmaps
- Grasp of AI and ML, including sovereign AI, and how they apply to telco networks and service quality
- Some knowledge of standards like 3GPP and ONAP, or of TM Forum or O-RAN specifications
Core Skills
Benefits
- Performance-linked annual bonus
- Learning allowance of USD 2,000 yearly
- Yearly pay review and recognition awards
- Holiday leave plus maternity and paternity leave
- Support through an employee assistance scheme
- Team gatherings held in person twice a year
- Trips to new places to meet colleagues on your team and beyond
- Priority Pass membership and upgrades 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 the role remote?
Yes. The posting describes a home based role that manages teams worldwide from a single main time zone.
How much travel is expected?
The posting says travel can take up to a quarter of working time, for company gatherings, conferences and client visits.
What experience is required?
Telco and cloud technical knowledge, practical Linux and networking, presales experience, and a track record of leading engineers and managers are required.
Is salary stated?
No figure is listed. Base pay depends on location, experience, knowledge and skills, and a performance-linked annual bonus is mentioned.
Sample Interview Questions
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