Performance Engineer

Join to apply for the Performance Engineer – Open Source role at Canonical. 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 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 1000+ colleagues in 70+ countries and very few office-based roles. Teams meet two to four times yearly in person at interesting locations around the world to align on strategy and execution. We are founder‑led, profitable, and growing. We have created a new career path at Canonical for Performance Engineers who bring exceptional clarity to software performance, correctness and efficiency. These roles exist in every engineering team and a central team drives shared tools, dashboarding capabilities, measurement frameworks, analytical capabilities and skills. We call this career focus “percorr” because deep insights into performance measurement and design also enable teams to improve harnesses and frameworks for correctness. Understanding not only the application, but the runtime, compiler, and system—down to the CPU—gives an engineer the ability to think creatively and with insight about the right things to measure and verify correctness. Performance engineers will often improve the deepest and trickiest areas of our test harnesses, unlocking hidden aspects of performance. We work with every major silicon vendor and cloud, emphasizing performance optimisation of the entire stack for those architectures, CPU families or hypervisors. Our goal is to ensure Ubuntu users can choose the platform they want for their workloads and have the best performance and efficiency across the entire stack from kernel to codec. Nice‑to‑have Skills We Value Low‑level CPU insights and assembly language – understanding cache, registers, vectorization, memory Kernel performance insights – scheduling, context switching, hardware acceleration Distributed systems performance insights – tracing, debugging Compiler level performance insights – profile guided optimization, inlining, assembly Runtime performance insights – Golang, Python, JVM, Node.js Database performance evaluation – plans, indexing, data modelling, tracing, monitoring Web browser performance insights – JS, web frameworks, tracing, CSS Performance measurement tooling – profiling, eBPF, D‑Trace, flamegraphs Benchmarks and performance measurement tools – Phoronix Test Suite, others Test harnesses and capabilities in C, C++, Rust, Python, Golang, Node.JS, JavaScript The Role Entails Drive software performance and correctness in a specific project Collaborate with colleagues and community around the globe Work on shared tools and infrastructure for performance measurement, analysis and reporting Teach, train and develop skills in your team for performance culture and design Strengthen test capabilities, harnesses and pipelines Analyze systems and code to understand performance and scalability Solve problems directly or through influence, leadership and skills development Review code and technical designs What We Are Looking For In You Exceptional academic track record from high school and university Undergraduate degree in Computer Science, Mathematics or Physics Demonstrable personal initiatives to measure and improve performance, efficiency and correctness in code Confidence to respectfully speak up, exchange feedback, and share ideas without hesitation Track record of going above and beyond expectations to achieve outstanding results Leadership and commitment to skills development and mentorship Passion for technology evidenced by personal projects and initiatives The work ethic and confidence to shine alongside motivated colleagues Professional written and spoken English with excellent presentation skills Experience with Linux (Debian or Ubuntu preferred) Excellent interpersonal skills, curiosity, flexibility, and accountability Appreciative of diversity, polite and effective in a multi‑cultural, multi‑national organisation Thoughtfulness and self‑motivation Result‑oriented, with a personal drive to meet commitments Ability to travel internationally twice a year, for company events up to two weeks long What We Offer Colleagues 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 Employee Assistance Programme Opportunity 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 on a global basis 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 its 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. Seniority Level Entry level Employment Type Full‑time Job Function Engineering and Information Technology Industries Software Development Referrals increase your chances of interviewing at Canonical by 2x. #J-18808-Ljbffr