Description review

Software Engineer - OpenStack

Canonical · United Kingdom, United States · back to the listing

HR standards

54/100

needs work

Title ↔ description

88/100

strong

Reads as

Backend Engineer

97% confident

What this role officially is

software developer — ESCO, the EU occupation classification

Software developers implement or program all kinds of software systems based on specifications and designs by using programming languages, tools, and platforms.

Also known as: application developer, application programmer, solutions developer, programmer, software specialist, application software developer

How others title the same work

Large employers

  • Software Engineer - OpenStack Canonical
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  • Containerization & Virtualisation Engineer Canonical Ltd.
  • Go (Golang) Software Engineer, Developer Tooling and Containers Canonical Ltd.
  • Golang Engineer Canonical Ltd.

Startups

  • Anterior (Sequoia-backed, Series B) | Senior Member of Technical Staff | On-Site (New York, NY) | Full Time | $230,000–$300,000 + equity Anterior (Sequoia-backed, Series B)
  • BitPay | Senior Backend Software Developer | Atlanta, GA | REMOTE (US) | BitPay
  • Distributed Systems Engineer Beam
  • Software Engineer, Platform Beam
  • Blaine, WA | CaseLight Systems Inc. (CSI) | Solo Founder | Remote (US Only) | Founding Systems Engineer | FULL EQUITY (30% Stake) Blaine, WA

What the listing never says

  • 21 bullet points. Long requirement lists deter qualified candidates, who read them as hard gates. Scope clarity
  • No pay range published. Candidates cannot tell whether applying is worth their time. Pay transparency

The listing, marked up

Nothing in the wording of this listing tripped a check. The scores above still judge how complete and coherent it is.

Canonical is a leading provider of open source software and operating systems to the global enterprise and technology markets. Our platform, Ubuntu, is very widely used in breakthrough enterprise initiatives such as public cloud, data science, AI, engineering innovation, and IoT. Our customers include the world's leading public cloud and silicon providers, and industry leaders in many sectors. The company is a pioneer of global distributed collaboration, with 1200+ 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.

We are hiring a Software Engineer for our OpenStack Engineering team. This is an exciting opportunity for a software engineer passionate about open source software, Linux, and OpenStack. Come build a rewarding, meaningful career working with the best and brightest people in technology at Canonical, a growing international software company.

As a software engineer on the OpenStack Engineering team, you’ll be building Charmed OpenStack and Ceph, a suite of open source Python based charms for deploying and managing OpenStack and Ceph. Your work will bring cloud platform technologies to a wide range of users and computing environments, from desktops to bare metal servers. This role requires a python software developer with a passion for automating infrastructure as code.

Applicants should be passionate about the future of the software defined datacenter, distributed systems, and open source. Canonical is a globally distributed team of engineers who share that passion, and you will need to work well in that context. Engineers who thrive at Canonical are mindful of the dynamics of the open source ecosystem, and equally aware of the needs of large, innovative organizations.

This job involves international travel several times a year, usually for one week at a time.

What you’ll do

• Collaborate proactively with a distributed team

• Write high quality code to create new features

• Debug issues and produce high quality code to fix them

• Review code produced by other engineers

• Discuss ideas and collaborate on finding good solutions

• Ensure the success of OpenStack and Ceph on multiple architectures

• Work from home with global travel 2 to 4 weeks for internal and external events

Who you are

• You love technology and working with brilliant people

• 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

• You have experience with Python

• You have interest and experience with two or more of the following:Ubuntu Linux - kernel or userspace, Kubernetes, OpenStack, Ceph, AI/ML, QEMU/KVM, LXC/LXD, Python, Go, C, Postgresql, Mongo, Debian packaging, scalable web services

• You have experience with non-x86 architectures, including s390, arm64, power and others

• You have experience with OpenStack, OVN, Openvswitch and other related cloud technologies

What Canonical Offers

• Learning and Development

• Annual Compensation Review

• Recognition Rewards

• Annual Leave

• Priority Pass for travel

• Flexible working option

Canonical believes a diverse workforce enhances our ability to deliver world class software and services which meet the world’s computing needs. We are committed to ensuring equal employment opportunities to all qualified individuals. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.

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 on a global basis and set a very high standard for people joining the company. We expect excellence; in order 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.

Canonical is an equal opportunity employer

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.

Originally posted on Himalayas

How this was produced

Highlights are found by rule, not by a model: each one is a phrase matched at a known position, and every note is a template we wrote. The two scores come from a typed-decision model (Jev) that reads the listing against the official role definition and real listings for the same role, and returns probabilities rather than prose — it never writes any of the words on this page, and never chooses what to highlight.

Deterministic penalty applied to the HR score: 8 points (from 62 before penalties). Reviewed 21 Sep 2026.