C

Canonical

Publishes Ubuntu and sells enterprise Linux support

General Counsel

Full-Time
No salary listed
Expert
Bachelor's
London, UK
HybridOffice-based in London, with international travel two to four times a year for events up to two weeks long.
LegalLegal Counsel & Legal Support

About the job

Requirements
  • An exceptional academic track record from both high school and university.
  • A degree in law, or equivalent, and an active licence to practice in an EMEA or Americas jurisdiction.
  • Substantial senior in-house experience in a global technology or software business.
  • Proven experience leading a distributed legal team, including managing managers across regions and time zones.
  • A track record of setting and holding a high performance bar by hiring well, developing people, and addressing underperformance directly.
  • Experience building or restructuring an in-house legal function, including deciding what work is retained, delegated, or sent to external counsel.
  • Experience negotiating and owning commercial technology contracts, including enterprise software and subscriptions, channel and reseller agreements, hardware manufacturer agreements, cloud, and services.
  • Experience advising on open source licensing, including permissive and copyleft licences, and familiarity with how open source communities operate.
  • Experience of, or demonstrable readiness for, public company governance, including listing preparation, board and committee support, disclosure, and controls.
  • Depth in at least two of the following areas: data protection and privacy, intellectual property and trademark, export controls and trade, competition, or disputes.
  • Professional written and spoken English, with excellent drafting and presentation skills.
  • International travel two to four times a year for company events lasting up to two weeks.
Responsibilities
  • Lead the global Legal and Compliance function, setting its structure, standards, and priorities across EMEA and the Americas.
  • Build and manage management capability by hiring and developing managers, setting objectives, reviewing performance against a clear bar, and addressing underperformance directly.
  • Set the function's operating cadence, including legal-work intake and prioritization, service expectations with internal clients, and reporting workload and risk to the leadership team.
  • Own legal public-market readiness, including corporate governance, group and entity structure, delegated authority, policies, disclosure controls, and records, in partnership with Finance.
  • Advise the CEO, COO, CFO, and Board, and support Board and committee meetings.
  • Own the commercial contracting framework, including standard templates, negotiating positions, and a deviation and escalation process that makes commitments visible before signing.
  • Lead intellectual property and open source licensing strategy, including copyleft, trademark, and the terms on which Ubuntu and company products are distributed.
  • Own the global compliance programme covering data protection and privacy, export controls and trade compliance, anti-bribery and corruption, competition, and AI regulation.
  • Manage litigation, disputes, and regulatory engagement, together with the external counsel panel, its budget, and its quality.
  • Advise on mergers and acquisitions, partnerships, strategic alliances, and financing as the company grows.
Desired Qualifications
  • Experience taking a company through an initial public offering or practicing as counsel inside a listed company.
  • A technical or engineering background, or fluency in how software is built and shipped.
  • Experience with a subscription or recurring-revenue business model.
  • Experience building or restructuring an in-house legal function.
  • A qualification in more than one jurisdiction.

About the company

C

Canonical

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cbWebsite

Canonical publishes Ubuntu and builds commercial open source infrastructure software for organizations running computers, servers and connected devices. Ubuntu is its flagship Linux operating system, with editions for personal computers, cloud workloads and embedded equipment. Its commercial tools manage systems, deploy private clouds and automate the operation of applications across a company's infrastructure. Customers pay for Ubuntu Pro subscriptions, technical support and managed services that add security maintenance, compliance tools and help operating their software. Canonical was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in London, United Kingdom.

Company Size

1,001-5,000

Company Stage

Early VC

Total Funding

$9.9M

Headquarters

London, United Kingdom

Founded

2004

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Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Arm servers gain live patching: April 2026's Ubuntu 26.04 extended reboot-free kernel updates to that architecture.
  • Restricted networks gain a subscription feature: July 2026's Enterprise Store bundles offline software distribution into Ubuntu Pro.
  • Remote engineers get funded learning: Canonical's worldwide Site Reliability Engineer role lists a $2,000 annual development budget.

What critics are saying

  • Free Ubuntu limits paid conversion: anyone, including global banks, downloads and uses the operating system without charge.
  • Maintenance spans generations: Canonical issues Ubuntu LTS releases every two years while supporting multiple older versions.
  • Remote work requires lengthy travel: Canonical's SRE application specifies two to four yearly events lasting one to two weeks.

What makes Canonical unique

  • Upgrade cycles stay long: Ubuntu Pro's Legacy add-on extends security maintenance to 15 years.
  • One package reaches multiple environments: Canonical's Snap Store distributes apps across Linux desktops, servers and connected devices.
  • Physical servers become programmable: Canonical's MAAS inventories and deploys hardware through cloud-style APIs.

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Benefits

  • Performance Bonus
  • Professional Development Budget
  • Paid Vacation
  • Parental Leave
  • Mental Health Support
  • Remote Work Options

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

0%

1 year growth

1%

2 year growth

0%
Linuxiac
Oct 15th, 2026
Ubuntu 26.10 released with GNOME 51, Linux kernel 7.3, and Rust coreutils.

Ubuntu 26.10 released with GNOME 51, Linux kernel 7.3, and Rust coreutils. Ubuntu 26.10 "Stonking Stingray" is now available, featuring GNOME 51, Linux kernel 7.3, improved App Center, Rust-based coreutils, and nine months of support. Canonical has officially released Ubuntu 26.10, codenamed "Stonking Stingray," the latest version of its popular Linux distribution. As an interim release after Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, it comes with nine months of support until July 2027. Starting with the desktop, Ubuntu 26.10 ships with GNOME 51. Users can expect smoother animations, more responsive interactions, and improved handling of multiple monitors, as GNOME now remembers monitor brightness settings across reboots and HDR changes. At the same time, display arrangement benefits from improved snapping. The Settings app also adds automatic screen rotation for supported devices and an option to disable the touchpad when an external mouse is connected. The Files app has received several refinements, including better file selection, faster operations, and clearer notifications. Calendar is also more responsive, particularly in its monthly view, while the Papers document viewer now supports adding visual signatures to PDFs. Moreover, Ubuntu's App Center now uses a unified details page for both Snap and DEB packages, presenting application versions, permissions, publisher information, screenshots, and package sizes in one place. There's also a dedicated section for managing graphics drivers, making it easier to review and select available NVIDIA driver versions without separate configuration tools. Additionally, the system can now help users install missing multimedia codecs when needed for playback, although some proprietary codecs remain unavailable by default. Under the hood, Ubuntu 26.10 ships with Linux kernel 7.3, offering updated hardware support and improvements across various subsystems. However, the initial Ubuntu kernel package is based on Linux 7.3-rc6 rather than the final upstream release. The graphics stack has been updated to Mesa 26.2, improving support for modern GPUs and adding further Vulkan capabilities. Hardware compatibility improvements also target laptops powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and X2 Elite processors. One of the more interesting changes in this release is the completion of Ubuntu's transition to Rust-based core utilities. Following the migration of most GNU coreutils commands to the Rust-based uutils implementation in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, Canonical has now switched the remaining commands, including cp, mv, and rm. As a result, Ubuntu 26.10 now uses Rust implementations for its default core command-line utilities. The change is part of Canonical's broader efforts to improve memory safety in fundamental system components without changing how users interact with familiar Linux commands. Another notable change is the replacement of the traditional dbus-daemon with dbus-broker, which offers improved reliability, resource accounting, and scalability. Ubuntu's existing AppArmor restrictions continue to apply to D-Bus communication. The release also upgrades systemd to version 261, removing support for legacy System V service scripts. On the security side, Ubuntu 26.10 introduces OpenSSL 4, with support for Encrypted Client Hello, expanded QUIC functionality, and further improvements related to post-quantum cryptography. Additionally, the Rust-based Sequoia PGP implementation is now available in Ubuntu's main repository, although traditional GnuPG tools remain available. Canonical has also expanded TPM-backed full-disk encryption options and introduced additional Secure Boot protections intended to reduce the attack surface during system startup. On the desktop side, another interesting addition is Myna, an experimental speech-to-text tool that allows users to dictate text directly into applications using a configurable keyboard shortcut. Unlike cloud-based alternatives, Myna processes speech locally without sending recorded audio to external servers. For now, it remains a technology preview and isn't installed by default. Ubuntu 26.10 also adds the ability to check hardware certification status directly from Settings. Enterprise users get authentication improvements, including Microsoft password and multi-factor authentication support through Ubuntu's authd service. Developers will find an updated collection of programming languages and tools, including Rust 1.97.1 and OpenJDK 27. And, as usual, there's a new selection of wallpapers, including community-created designs featuring the release's stingray mascot. Finally, keep in mind that Ubuntu 26.10 is a short-term release supported for nine months, until July 2027. Users who prioritize stability and longer maintenance periods may prefer to remain on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. Ubuntu 26.10 is available for download from the official Ubuntu servers as desktop and server installation images. For additional information and upgrade instructions, refer to the release notes. Tell others: Bobby borisov. Bobby, an editor-in-chief at Linuxiac, is a Linux professional with over 20 years of experience. With a strong focus on Linux and open-source software, he has worked as a Senior Linux System Administrator, Software Developer, and DevOps Engineer for small and large multinational companies.

Canonical
Oct 15th, 2026
Canonical releases Ubuntu 26.10 Stonking Stingray.

Canonical releases Ubuntu 26.10 Stonking Stingray. The latest interim release of Ubuntu previews privacy conscious speech-to-text, enables post-quantum package signing, completes the rollout of Rust coreutils, and improves enterprise identity integration. October 15, 2026 Today Canonical announced the release of Ubuntu 26.10, codenamed "Stonking Stingray," available to download and install from ubuntu.com/download. Building on previous releases, Ubuntu 26.10 advances enterprise security features, completes the rollout of the Rust-based uutils coreutils, and strengthens integrations for user authentication using Microsoft Entra ID. Ubuntu 26.10 also introduces post-quantum package signing, demonstrating that interim releases both build on established ground, and look towards the future. Earlier this year, Canonical Ltd. set out a roadmap for AI on Ubuntu. Stonking Stingray delivers the first milestone through the integration of Myna: a speech-to-text agent that utilizes on-device LLMs. Canonical Ltd. has led Ubuntu's first AI integration with accessibility to ensure that cutting-edge features are available to all users from day one. Users will also benefit from enhanced security features. Ubuntu 26.10 completes the migration to Rust-based coreutils, and broadens device support for TPM-backed FDE. Stonking Stingray is symbolic of Ubuntu's journey to not just build up, but also build out. Jon Seager, VP of Ubuntu Engineering at Canonical Elegance and accessibility with new speech-to-text agent. Stonking Stingray brings Canonical Ltd. the debut of Myna: Ubuntu's speech-to-text agent. Named after the Myna bird (known for its ability to mimic human speech), Myna is an opt-in feature in Ubuntu 26.10, designed to provide speech recognition with clear visual feedback while you speak. Based on local models, Myna offers speech-to-text, without sacrificing privacy. Myna will continue to evolve and as Ubuntu 28.04 LTS approaches, it will be included by default with Ubuntu. Myna marks the first step towards a more natural, intent-driven Ubuntu Desktop experience that will enable users to express what they want to achieve, rather than manually navigate applications and settings. For example, a developer could simply say, "Help me investigate why my tests are failing," and Ubuntu could analyze test results, locate relevant code, and prepare a workspace with the tools and information needed to troubleshoot the issue. Ubuntu 26.10 also ships with GNOME 51, bringing a smoother, more responsive desktop, better display handling, improved accessibility, and refinements across core applications. In addition, the Ubuntu App Center now provides a more consistent experience for managing snaps and debs. Users of assistive technology will benefit from improved support for Flutter applications, with assistive technologies like Orca (screen-reader) now able to better parse and understand the content included in Flutter applications. This release also brings reliability enhancements to the desktop userspace layers. Ubuntu 26.10 adopts dbus-broker as the default D-Bus implementation, replacing legacy message queuing between apps with strict per-app message accounting, ensuring a single app can't stall the desktop. Additionally, desktop OOM (out-of-memory protection) scoring has been adjusted to better manage-memory pressure in userspace. Security for present and future threats. Ubuntu Desktop now integrates more naturally with Microsoft identity services, including password with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), and passwordless authentication. This ensures devices can authenticate securely by default, and under the same security umbrella as Windows devices in the same organization. TPM-backed full-disk encryption, which was rolled out in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, has been expanded to encompass hardware models lacking a Hardware Root of Trust, with users being able to require a PIN or passphrase. These features ensure that users can use Ubuntu with best practice security enabled by default. Ubuntu 26.10 delivers post-quantum ready package signing, by replacing GnuPG with Sequoia PGP to verify APT repository signatures. Sequoia brings Rust's memory-safe practices to package signing and acts as a barrier to the threat of quantum cryptographic attack attempts. Ubuntu 26.10 introduces quantum-safe token support via openCryptoki, providing robust PKCS #11 V3.2 coverage across multiple token types, including Soft, EP11, and CCA tokens with ML-DSA and ML-KEM integration. A new kernel. The latest hardware. Ubuntu 26.10 brings Linux kernel 7.3, which facilitates hardware enablement for the latest silicon, such as Intel Xe3P (Nova Lake), AMD Zen 6, and NVIDIA 615. As heterogeneous platforms like these span CPU cores, GPUs, and media decoders, the latest kernel brings the direct rendering management and power management hooks needed for these components to perform. Kernel 7.3 also enhances the way data is handled at the software level, through out-of-the-box support for Lustre, a parallel distributed file system designed to transfer massive datasets simultaneously across thousands of corporate nodes. Ubuntu 26.10 continues the tradition of delivering architecture-focused enhancements. Stonking Stingray will launch with a dedicated installer for amd64v3 hardware, ensuring that users with modern platforms get an optimized experience. For RISC-V users, Ubuntu 26.10 brings desktop images, complementing the work that had already been done to do so with Server images. This includes support for the first RVA23-enabled RISC-V hardware, the SpacemiT K3, ensuring that developers can meet the new standard with confidence on a stable OS. Together, these enhancements streamline setup for developers building on cutting-edge silicon. 2026 is the year of RVA23 silicon, so I'm thrilled to see desktop image support arrive for RISC-V in Ubuntu 26.10. It brings the power of the RVA23 profile to everyday applications including productivity, online meetings, video streaming and software development. Andrea Gallo, CEO of RISC-V International A speedy path to AI and software development. Beyond hardware enablement, Stonking Stingray also delivers enhanced support for running accelerated AI workloads. Ubuntu 26.04 LTS brought ROCm (AMD's AI enablement stack for AMD hardware) into the Ubuntu archive. Ubuntu 26.10 upgrades that to the latest major version with support for ROCm 10.0. ROCm 10.0 adds support for new GPU architectures and serving frameworks like vLLM and SGLang. Ubuntu 26.10 also distributes the latest developer toolchains from upstream, including LLVM 22.1.6, GCC 15.2.0, Python 3.14.7, Rust 1.97.1, Zig 0.16, and Go 1.27. Spring AI is also available on Ubuntu Desktop for the first time, through the devpack for Spring, a snap that bundles the latest features and versions of Spring. For those developing in Rust, Ubuntu 26.10 coincides with the release of the devpack for Rust, bringing a batteries-included setup experience complete with flexible version management and robust IDE support. Get started today. About Canonical. Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, provides open source security, support and services. Its portfolio covers critical systems, from the smallest devices to the largest clouds, from the kernel to containers, from databases to AI. With customers that include top tech brands, emerging startups, governments and home users, Canonical delivers trusted open source for everyone.

Phoronix
Oct 12th, 2026
Ubuntu's Myna speech-to-text now available in tech preview.

Ubuntu's Myna speech-to-text now available in tech preview. A few months ago Canonical announced Myna as a speech-to-text solution for Ubuntu 26.10 as part of their effort for building a context-aware desktop. Myna as of today is available in "tech preview" form not only for Ubuntu 26.10 but also the LTS releases. Ahead of the Ubuntu 26.10 official release on 15 October, Myna is now available in tech preview form. Myna is optional on Ubuntu 26.10 and can also be installed on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and Ubuntu 26.04 LTS via Snap. Before getting too excited, Myna is still in early stages of development: "Myna is still under active development, so you should expect some rough edges. The core experience is there: press a shortcut, speak, and Myna transcribes directly into the application you're using." Myna runs the speech-to-text model locally and requires no Internet use after downloading the initial model. Myna supports Parakeet, Whisper, and FunASR on the back-end.

SparTech Software
Oct 12th, 2026
Ubuntu websites suffer second major DDoS outage 2026.

Ubuntu websites suffer second major DDoS outage 2026. Canonical's public-facing Ubuntu web infrastructure was knocked offline this month by a sustained distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, disrupting access to core sites including ubuntu.com and canonical.com for several hours on October 8, 2026[[1]] [[4]]. The incident marks the second major DDoS outage to hit Ubuntu's web services in 2026, following a prolonged attack in the spring that took down a broader swath of infrastructure[[3]] [[8]] [[10]]. In an announcement to the Ubuntu community, Canonical said its websites were under a "sustained distributed denial of service attack" and warned that some services would be "intermittently unavailable" while response teams worked to restore connectivity[[4]] [[9]]. Status messages and community reporting indicate that the main Ubuntu and Canonical domains, including the Ubuntu blog and developer portal, experienced outages of roughly four hours at their peak, with additional shorter disruptions around the same period[[1]] [[6]]. By contrast, core backend services such as personal package archives (PPAs), CD image servers, Launchpad, the Snap Store, and Ubuntu single sign-on remained largely operational during the October event[[1]]. Discover more Secure Networks Try Cloud Tools Audit Security For users, the most visible impact was the temporary loss of access to documentation, download links, and security notices, with some visitors seeing error pages or timeout messages instead of the usual content[[1]] [[3]] [[5]]. Reports from community forums and news aggregators described the Ubuntu website and related resources as "inoperable" during the height of the attack, affecting ISO image downloads and other web-delivered assets that administrators rely on for new installations and maintenance[[6]] [[9]] [[13]]. There is currently no indication that the DDoS campaign involved exploitation of a specific software vulnerability or resulted in compromise of Canonical's systems; rather, it appears to have been a volumetric attack designed to overwhelm network and application capacity, a pattern consistent with the company's public characterizations and media coverage[[4]] [[12]]. Compare Security The October outage comes just months after a more severe DDoS incident that began around April 30 and extended into early May, when Canonical confirmed that Ubuntu's web infrastructure was under a "sustained, cross-border" attack affecting more than a dozen domains[[10]] [[11]] [[15]]. During that earlier campaign, key endpoints such as security.ubuntu.com, archive.ubuntu.com, and various Canonical portals were unreachable, preventing many users from installing or updating Ubuntu and cutting off access to security APIs and notices[[12]] [[13]] [[14]]. Hacktivists using the name "The Islamic Cyber Resistance in Iraq 313 Team" claimed responsibility for the spring attack on social channels, but Canonical has not publicly validated that attribution, and the group's role in any subsequent activity remains unconfirmed[[12]] [[14]]. So far, Canonical has not named a perpetrator for the October DDoS, and no hacktivist or criminal group has credibly claimed the operation in open channels[[3]] [[4]]. Company updates emphasize that incident response teams moved quickly to mitigate the traffic flood and restore affected sites, with the Ubuntu status page now showing all components as operational following the disruptions earlier in the week[[4]] [[6]] [[9]]. The absence of publicly disclosed technical indicators or detailed postmortem information suggests Canonical is focusing on hardening its web front ends and upstream providers while keeping attribution and deeper analysis close hold. Discover more Protect Devices Compare VPNs The recurring outages underline the operational risk that DDoS campaigns pose even to mature, globally distributed infrastructure, and they offer a reminder for enterprise defenders who depend on Ubuntu services for builds, updates, and documentation. Organizations that mirror Ubuntu packages locally, maintain offline installation media, and cache critical documentation are less exposed to upstream web disruptions, while those without such contingencies can see patch workflows and deployment pipelines stall when central resources go dark. Beyond local resilience, security teams should review their own DDoS posture - ensuring layered protection across DNS, web application firewalls, and upstream transit providers - and consider how a similar volumetric attack against their own public services could impede incident response or customer communication at a critical moment. Compare Security

LinuxNews
Oct 12th, 2026
Ubuntu 27.04 "Tenacious T-Rex" Is slated for release on April 22nd, 2027.

Ubuntu 27.04 "Tenacious T-Rex" Is slated for release on April 22nd, 2027. Canonical's next major Ubuntu release, Ubuntu 27.04 "Tenacious T-Rex," has been slated for release on April 22nd, 2027, and it's expected to come with the GNOME 52 desktop environment and Linux kernel 7.6. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.