Telco Field Engineering Director

This is an opportunity to run the worldwide Telco Field Engineering business, helping customers understand and implement Canonical's open source solutions in public clouds and in their own data centers. We work across the entire spectrum of cloud offerings, from Ubuntu itself to virtualisation and private cloud, Kubernetes, and the implementation of sophisticated open source solutions such as MLops platforms, data platforms and more. The Telco department is composed of three regional teams (APAC, EMEA and AMER). 

We believe that Engineering Directors should be outstanding engineers themselves. They should feel completely at home troubleshooting technical issues and having technical presales conversations with customers. They should contribute to project delivery themselves, but know that the technical contributions they bring are far less significant than their ability to shape the whole team’s direction, focus and delivery. We grow management skills and train engineers, who are interested in soft skills, to be managers.

We believe that open source is just starting to transform the tech sector and enterprise compute. Our goal is to make open source easier, more reliable and more secure for deployment and development. We strive to be the provider of ‘most software to most companies’. To deliver on that ambition, our engineers are carefully selected from the applicants across the globe. We select for brilliance and motivation to take open source to the next level. Our engineering managers help teams achieve more than they realised they could, and feel proud of the result.

The role of a Telco Field Engineering Director at Canonical

The Field Engineering department is our team of cloud solutions architects at Canonical, working directly with our customers, designing private and public cloud solutions fitting their workload needs. The portfolio of products includes on-premise cloud solutions such as Openstack, MicroCloud and Ceph, and solutions that could be deployed either on-premises or in public clouds such as Kubernetes, Kubeflow, Spark, PostgreSQL, etc.  The team works hands-on with the technologies by deploying, testing and handing over the solution to our support or managed services team at the end of a project. Managers and team members also take part in presales conversations to provide technical advice during the sales process. 

Within the Field Engineering department, there are multiple focused teams : the Cloud/DC team, the Alliances/Partners team, the IoT team, and the Telco team. 

The telco industry is moving to software-defined services. This transformation is driven by open source software, cloud computing and the move to VNF / CNF approaches. Canonical Ubuntu is a key platform for telco innovation, and we are growing our team of specialists who work in the industry to accelerate the change.

Canonical enables operators and communications service providers to embrace this new world, with a focus on platforms such as Ubuntu, OpenStack, and Kubernetes, and reusable, high quality automation for operations at scale.

A Cloud Field Engineering Director is responsible for driving the strategy in presales and delivery for our telco customers. The ability to develop engineering talent, to represent your team from a technical perspective, and to drive collaboration with other teams and customers are all critical to success in this role. You are also expected to actively participate in technical presales to help our department achieve our quarterly goals.

Location: This role will be home based, managing teams in worldwide.

What your day will look like

Lead and develop managers and teams of Field engineers in the areas of Presales and Professional Services

Solve customer problems by promoting our technologies and being a trusted advisor

Work remotely in a single major time zone

Coach, mentor, and offer career development feedback

Identify and measure team health indicators

Implement disciplined engineering processes

Represent your team and product to stakeholders, partners, and customers 

Develop and evangelise great engineering and organisational practices

Plan and manage progress on agreed goals and projects

Be an active part of the leadership team, collaborating with other leaders

What we are looking for in you

A thorough technical understanding of the telco NFVi (VIM), NFVO, VNFM and MEC space and key telco cloud infrastructure technologies like CPU Pinning, NUMA, SR-IOV, DPDK, etc

Familiarity with telco architecture and industry standards

Working knowledge of at least one of the following domains: Mobile Packet Core (4G/5G), Private Network, Radio Access Network (RAN), Voice, IP Backbone, VAS or OSS/BSS

Knowledge of cloud computing concepts & technologies, such as Kubernetes, Openstack, AWS, GCP, Azure, Ceph, etc.

Practical knowledge of Linux and networking

Experience in technical presales

You are a dynamic person who loves to jump in new projects and interact with people

Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English

Passion and a track record of developing and growing people

Experience in leading, coaching and mentoring engineers and managers

Organised and able to ensure your team delivers timely, high quality results

 An exceptional academic track record from high school and, preferably, university as well

 Willingness to travel up to 25% of the time. Field Engineers attend internal company events, external tech events and customer meetings.

Additional skills that you might also bring

Second language - Spanish or French preferred

Python knowledge

Experience collaborating with external partners

Experience collaborating with several internal teams and providing stakeholder feedback for engineering roadmaps

Understanding of AI and machine learning concepts, including sovereign AI, and their potential applications in telco environments, such as network optimization, predictive maintenance, unified communication, and customer experience improvement

Exposure to frameworks such as 3GPP, TM Forum ODA, eTOM, ETSI NFV, ONAP, O-RAN, or similar is a plus

What we offer you

We consider geographical location, experience, and performance in shaping compensation worldwide. We revisit compensation annually (and more often for graduates and associates) to ensure we recognise outstanding performance. In addition to base pay, we offer a performance-driven annual bonus. We provide all team members with additional benefits, which reflect our values and ideals. We balance our programs to meet local needs and ensure fairness globally.

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 from your team and others

Priority Pass for travel and travel upgrades for long haul company events

About Canonical

Canonical is a pioneering tech firm that is 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 on a daily basis. 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.

Canonical has been a remote-first company since its inception in 2004.​ Work at Canonical is a step into the future, and will challenge you to think differently, work smarter, learn new skills, and raise your game. Canonical provides a unique window into the world of 21st-century digital business.

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 pr