Senior Site Reliability / Gitops Engineer

Senior Site Reliability / Gitops Engineer

Canonical Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Company Overview

Canonical is a leading provider of open source software and operating systems to the global enterprise and technology markets. Our platform, Ubuntu, is widely used in public cloud, data science, AI, engineering innovation, and IoT. Our customers include world‑leading public cloud and silicon providers and industry leaders in many sectors. We are a pioneer of global distributed collaboration with 1,200+ 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.

Job Summary

The IS team at Canonical supports and maintains all of Canonical's IT production services and runs services used by over 60 million Ubuntu users. As a Senior SRE & GitOps engineer you will drive operations automation in our private clouds and public clouds, using the best open‑source infrastructure‑as‑code software, CI/CD practices, and Canonical’s leading automation products. You will help define our infrastructure‑as‑code practice, improve Canonical’s open‑source products by providing feedback to developers, and collaborate on design and implementations across teams.

Responsibilities

• Drive the development of automation and GitOps within your team as an embedded tech lead.
• Close collaboration with the IS architect to align system solutions with the IS architecture vision.
• Design and architect services for the organization as reusable products.
• Apply industry‑standard IaC practices to increase automation and improve IaC processes within IS.
• Automate software operations for re‑usability and consistency across private and public clouds, addressing distributed system complexities.
• Maintain operational responsibility for all of Canonical's core services, networks, and infrastructure.
• Develop troubleshooting, capacity planning, and performance investigation skills; set up, maintain, and use observability tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, and Elasticsearch; design, implement and maintain monitoring and alerting for various systems and services.
• Provide assistance and collaborate with globally distributed engineering, operations, and support peers.
• Receive uninterrupted development time to focus on larger projects and automate manual tasks.
• Share experience, know‑how and best practices with other team members in design sessions, mentorship, and collaborative work.
• Carry final responsibility for time‑critical escalations.

Qualifications

• A modern perspective on hosting architecture driven by infrastructure‑as‑code across private and public clouds.
• A product mindset, focused on developing products rather than short‑term solutions.
• Python software development experience in large projects.
• Experience with Kubernetes or other container orchestration systems.
• Proven exposure to managing and deploying cloud infrastructure with code.
• Practical knowledge of Linux networking, routing and firewalls.
• Affinity for various Linux storage solutions, from Ceph to databases.
• Hands‑on experience administering enterprise Linux servers.
• Extensive knowledge of cloud computing concepts and technologies.
• Bachelor’s degree or greater, preferably in computer science or related engineering field.
• Excellent written and verbal communication in English across email, chat, video, voice calls and in‑person interactions.
• Motivation to troubleshoot from kernel to web and willingness to seek help when appropriate.
• Willingness to be flexible and learn new things quickly.
• Inspirational by the needs of fast‑changing environments.
• Comfortable working within distributed teams.
• Passion for open‑source technology, especially Ubuntu or Debian.

What we offer

• 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.
• Team Member Assistance Program & Wellness Platform.
• Opportunities 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 globally and set a very high standard for people joining the company. We expect excellence; 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.

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.