Senior Software Engineer (Backend)

Dear Sharar

Thank you for your interest in our Software Engineer - Launchpad position at Canonical.

I am the hiring lead for this role and a member of the leadership team. If I think there are other roles that would be interesting for you I'll suggest them to you, and I will be happy to answer questions you have about the company and our engineering approach.

I have reviewed your resume and application answers and moved you forward. We start with a formal assessment stage consisting of a written interview and tests that you can take at your own pace, followed by three stages of interviews. In outline:

Review of your application materials (done)
Written interview and psychometric assessment (this step)
Technical assessment and team interviews
Hiring manager & senior leadership Interviews
Offer

This is your written interview, a prepared statement to cover your strengths, interests, priorities, experience, ideas and ambition.

We use an initial written interview to get a sense of your experience, your priorities, and how you communicate. We have multiple reviewers assess your answer in an anonymized system to reduce bias and allow candidates from a range of backgrounds to demonstrate their ability, experience and insights. Please feel free to reuse answers if you have made multiple applications to roles at Canonical. There is no rush, I will leave your application open a few weeks to let you find the time for this step.

Please address the following in a PDF document:

Engineering experience

Describe your level of experience in Python, and how you have attained it.
Describe your experience with SQL and relational data modeling, and summarize your learning with large-scale database backed applications.
Describe a case where it was very difficult to test code you were writing, but you found a reliable way to do it.
What kinds of software projects have you worked on before? Which operating systems, development environments, languages, databases?
Would you describe yourself as a high quality coder? Why?
Would you describe yourself as an architect of resilient software? If so, why, and in which sorts of applications?
Outline your thoughts on open source software development. What is important to get right in open source projects? What open source projects have you worked on? Have you been an open source maintainer, on which projects, and what was your role?
Describe your experience building large systems with many services - web front ends, REST APIs, data stores, event processing and other kinds of integration between components. What are the key things to think about in regard to architecture, maintainability, and reliability in these large systems?
How comprehensive would you say your knowledge of a Linux distribution is, from the kernel up? How familiar are you with low-level system architecture, runtimes and Linux distro packaging? How have you gained this knowledge?
Describe any experience you have with low-level embedded systems engineering, on Linux or other embedded operating systems
Describe your experience with large-scale IT operations, SAAS, or other running services, in a devops or IS or system administration capacity
Describe your experience with public cloud based operations - how well do you understand large-scale public cloud estate management and developer experience?
Describe your experience with enterprise infrastructure and application management, either as a user running enterprise operations, or as a vendor targeting the enterprise market
Outline your thoughts on quality in software development. What practices are most effective to drive improvements in quality?
Outline your thoughts on documentation in large software projects. What practices should teams follow? What are great examples of open source docs?
Outline your thoughts on user experience, usability and design in software. How do you lead teams to deliver outstanding user experience?
Outline your thoughts on performance in software engineering. How do you ensure that your product is fast?
Outline your thoughts on security in software engineering. How do you lead your engineers to improve their security posture and awareness?
Outline your thoughts on devops and devsecops. Which practices are effective, and which are overrated?

Industry leadership experience

Describe your speaking experience at industry events and conferences
Are you a thought leader in any particular area of technology?
Describe any experience working with startups. What did you draw from that experience that would be relevant for this application?
Describe any experience working in a public company. What is important for your colleagues to know about being a public company?

Education

We consider academic results in high school and university for all roles, regardless of seniority or department. To enjoy a long and varied career at Canonical, one would need to tackle problems that cannot be defined today! From engineering to marketing to operations and sales, we intensely value colleagues who are able to puzzle through difficult problems and find the optimal path forward.

How did you rank in your high school, in your final year in maths and hard sciences? Which was your strongest?
How did you rank in your high school, in your final year in languages and the arts? Which was your strongest?
Please state your high school graduation results or university entrance results, along with the system used, and how to understand those. For example, in the US, you might give your SAT or ACT scores. In Germany, you might give your scores 1-5.
What sort of high school student were you? Outside of class, what were your interests and hobbies? What would your high school peers remember you for, if we asked them?
Which university and degree did you choose? What other universities did you consider, and why did you select that one?
At university, did you do particularly well at any area of your degree?
Overall, what was your degree result and how did that reflect on your ability?
In high school and university, what did you achieve that was exceptional?
What leadership roles did you take on during your education?

Context

Outline your thoughts on the mission of Canonical. What is it about the company's purpose and goals which is most appealing to you? What do you see as risky or unappealing?
Who are Canonical's key competitors, and how should Canonical set about winning?
Why do you most want to work for Canonical?
What would you most want to change about Canonical?
What gets you most excited about this role?

There is no rush, I will leave your application open for a few weeks to give you time as needed to reflect and draft your response. Please submit your answers as a PDF document - and in order to help us reduce bias, please do not put identifying details in the submission or document filename. Don't worry, the system will track it against your application if you use the URL below.

I will shortly be sending you an email with some useful information on the team together with a link to access your personalised candidate page. You can use this page to learn more about me, follow your journey through our process, watch our hiring video and access the candidate FAQ page. I hope you find this useful.

Thank you and I look forward to reading your work.

Bryan

For further information on data collection, please refer to our recruitment privacy notice and privacy policy.

Attach Dropbox Google Drive