Ubuntu Package Management - Engineering Manager

Accountabilities: Technical leadership: Define the technical vision and roadmap for package management and system lifecycle technologies, ensuring alignment with broader platform objectives. Architecture and engineering decisions: Participate in design reviews and guide key technical decisions affecting software management, updates, upgrades, drivers, firmware, and related infrastructure. Engineering excellence: Promote high standards for performance, reliability, security, compatibility, maintainability, and overall software quality. Team leadership: Lead and support a team of experienced engineers, creating an environment built around ownership, collaboration, technical excellence, and continuous improvement. Talent development: Mentor engineers and help them strengthen their technical leadership, ownership, and organizational impact through coaching and performance development. Delivery management: Plan and deliver improvements across multiple release cycles while balancing innovation with stability, compatibility, and long-term sustainability. Quality and reliability: Improve test automation, release quality, engineering processes, and operational reliability across the team's technology portfolio. Cross-functional collaboration: Build strong partnerships with teams across desktop, server, security, release engineering, product, OEM, and related engineering functions. Open source collaboration: Work with Debian, upstream projects, and the wider open source community to support collaboration and continued technology evolution. Strategic improvement: Identify opportunities to strengthen roadmap clarity, planning, execution, reliability, test coverage, and overall product quality. Requirements: Academic background: Exceptional academic performance at high school and university level, with an undergraduate degree in Computer Science, STEM, or an equivalent compelling professional background. Software engineering: Strong professional experience in software engineering, system design, and the development of complex technical platforms. Engineering management: Proven experience leading engineering teams, including people management, coaching, mentoring, and performance development. Linux expertise: Experience developing or operating Linux distribution technologies, package management systems, or software distribution infrastructure. Systems knowledge: Strong understanding of systems software and operating system architecture. Package management: Familiarity with package repositories, archives, package management, or software lifecycle technologies is valuable. Release engineering: Understanding of release engineering processes and the challenges involved in maintaining reliable software across multiple release cycles. Open source: Experience contributing to Debian, Ubuntu, or other open source infrastructure projects is an advantage. Technical quality: Experience in performance, reliability, security engineering, or related areas is beneficial. Communication: Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical topics clearly and collaborate effectively across teams. Distributed collaboration: Ability to work successfully within a globally distributed engineering organization and build relationships across different functions and regions. Travel: Willingness and ability to travel internationally approximately twice per year for company events lasting up to two weeks. Benefits: Remote-first environment: Work remotely as part of a globally distributed organization, with roles designed to support employees across different time zones. In-person collaboration: Participate in team sprints and company events held approximately twice a year in different locations. Learning and development: Receive a personal learning and development budget of USD 2,000 per year. Performance-based compensation: Compensation considers geographical location, experience, and performance, with a performance-driven annual bonus. Annual compensation review: Regular compensation reviews designed to recognize strong performance and maintain competitive pay. Recognition rewards: Access to programs that recognize employee contributions and achievements. Paid holiday: Annual holiday leave to support time away from work and personal well-being. Parental leave: Maternity and paternity leave provisions. Employee support: Access to an Employee Assistance Programme. Global travel: Opportunities to travel to new locations and meet colleagues in person. Travel benefits: Priority Pass access and travel upgrades for eligible long-haul company events. Open source impact: Opportunity to contribute to globally used Linux and open source technologies while working on foundational systems infrastructure.