Lead Data Governance Engineer

Canonical Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa

Canonical is a leading provider of open‑source software and operating systems for global enterprise and technology markets. Our platform, Ubuntu, is widely used in public cloud, data science, AI, engineering innovation and IoT initiatives. We are a pioneer of global distributed collaboration with 1.2k+ colleagues in more than 80 countries.

This role will be based remotely in the EMEA region.

• Define, monitor, and execute data governance policies
• Design, implement, and maintain tooling for automated data mesh operations
• Deploy and operate services developed by the team
• Coach, mentor and provide career development feedback depending on seniority
• Develop and evangelise best engineering and organisational practices

• Exceptional academic track record from high school and university
• Undergraduate degree in a technical subject or a compelling narrative about an alternative path
• Track record of going above-and-beyond to achieve outstanding results
• Experience with data quality, governance and security processes and tools
• Experience with Python and SQL development
• Professional written and spoken English with excellent presentation skills
• Result‑oriented and personally driven to meet commitments
• Willingness to travel internationally twice a year, up to two weeks for company events

• Performance engineering and security experience
• Experience with Airbyte, Ranger, Superset, Temporal or Trino

• Distributed work environment with twice‑yearly in‑person team sprints
• 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 Program
• Opportunities to travel to new locations to meet colleagues
• Priority Pass and travel upgrades for long‑haul company events

Canonical is a pioneering tech firm that publishes Ubuntu, one of the world’s most important open‑source projects and a platform for AI, IoT and cloud. We recruit globally and expect excellence from all teams.

We foster a workplace free from discrimination. Diversity of experience, perspectives and background creates a better work environment and better products. Whatever your identity, we will give your application fair consideration.

Mid‑Senior level

Full‑time

Information Technology