General Counsel

Leading the global Legal and Compliance function: setting it's structure, standards and priorities across EMEA and the Americas.

Building and managing a management capability: hire and develop managers, set objectives, review performance against a clear bar, and address under-performance directly.

Setting the operating cadence of the function: intake and prioritization of legal work, service expectations with internal clients, and reporting on workload and risk to the leadership team.

Owning public-market readiness on the legal side: corporate governance, group and entity structure, delegated authority, policies, disclosure controls and records, in partnership with Finance.

Advising the CEO, COO, CFO and the Board, and supporting in Board and committee meetings.

Owning the commercial contracting framework: standard templates, negotiating positions, and a deviation and escalation process that makes commitments visible before they are signed.

Leading intellectual property and open source licensing strategy, including copyleft, trademark and the terms on which Ubuntu and our products are distributed.

Owning the global compliance programme: data protection and privacy, export controls and trade compliance, anti-bribery and corruption, competition and AI regulation.

Managing litigation, disputes and regulatory engagement, together with the external counsel panel, its budget and its quality.

Advising on M&A, partnerships, strategic alliances and financing as the company grows.

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: hiring well, developing people, and dealing with under performance directly rather than waiting it out.

Experience building or restructuring an in-house legal function, including deciding what is retained, delegated and sent to external counsel.

Technology related experience of: negotiating and owning commercial technology contracts, including enterprise software and subscriptions, channel and reseller agreements, hardware manufacturer agreements, cloud and services advising on open source licensing, including permissive and copyleft licences, and familiarity with how open source communities operate.

negotiating and owning commercial technology contracts, including enterprise software and subscriptions, channel and reseller agreements, hardware manufacturer agreements, cloud and services

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: listing preparation, board and committee support, disclosure and controls.

Depth in at least two of: data protection and privacy, IP and trademark, export controls and trade, competition, or disputes.

Confidence to respectfully speak up, exchange feedback, hold colleagues accountable, and share ideas without hesitation.

Professional written and spoken English with excellent drafting and presentation skills.

Excellent interpersonal skills, curiosity, flexibility, and accountability.

International travel two to four times a year for company events up to two weeks long.

Canonical is a pioneering tech firm at the forefront of the global move to open source. Our platform, Ubuntu, is very 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. We are founder-led, profitable, and growing.

Powered by worldwide distributed collaboration since our inception in 2004, we believe tech and business leadership can emerge anywhere. We have no central headquarters. Most of us work from home, but we are exceptionally disciplined about this. We have very high expectations of all colleagues, and are champions of excellence. Working here is a step into the future and will challenge you to think differently, work smarter, learn new skills, and raise your game.

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.