---
title: 'UX Designer - Design systems at Canonical'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/ux-designer-design-systems-canonical-emea-6mtfbkn9g950'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# UX Designer - Design systems at Canonical

- **Company:** Canonical
- **Location:** EMEA
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2025-07-04
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/canonical/jobs/7043028

## Job description

Canonical is a leading provider of open source software and operating systems to the global enterprise and technology markets. 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. The company is a pioneer of global distributed collaboration, with 1200+ colleagues in 75+ countries and very few office based roles. Teams meet two to four times yearly in person, in interesting locations around the world, to align on strategy and execution.

The company is founder led, profitable and growing.

We are hiring a UX designer for our Design System Team.

You will play a key role making open source software available to the world. Our Design function ensures the experience of the software and infrastructure we build is true to our intentions, and delivers the tools our community and customers need. The Design System UX designer makes that possible by defining, evolving and advocating for a consistent use of design system that scales across our products.

This role sits in the design system team reporting to Design Systems Management

Location: This role will be based remotely in the EMEA region.

## The role entails

- Building and evolving Canonical’s design system, ensuring measurable adoption, consistency, scalability and accessibility across our products
- Collaborating with designers, engineers and stakeholders to translate user needs and brand principles into reusable components, patterns and guidelines
- Championing design system best practices, advocating for cohesive user experience and design, providing documentation and support for cross-functional teams
- Designing and documenting UI components, design tokens and interaction patterns
- Ensuring timely and efficient delivery of the roadmap
- Enabling alignment on design system usage and governance across teams
- Advocating for accessibility, performance, and scalability in design system decisions and iterating based on data and technological advancements
- Staying ahead of industry trends, ensuring innovation and balancing it with system coherence and performance

## What we are looking for in you

- Relevant experience in UX/product design, with a strong focus on design systems in complex environments
- A portfolio demonstrating strong expertise in design systems, including component libraries, documentation and handling complex environments
- Exceptional educational achievements in design or related behavioral science discipline
- Expertise in Figma, Storybook and design token workflows
- Experience of collaborating with engineers and bridging design and code
- Proven ability to apply design process and clearly communicate and document design decisions
- Excellent attention to detail and systemic approach to solving complex design challenges
- Commitment to transparent project delivery and owning team deadlines
- A passion for balancing consistency and innovation
- Willingness to travel up to 4 times a year for internal events

[Read more about the design team](https://canonical.design/)

## What we offer colleagues

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 recognize outstanding performance. In addition to base pay, we offer a performance-driven annual bonus or commission. 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
- Team Member Assistance Program & Wellness Platform
- Opportunity to travel to new locations to meet colleagues
- Priority Pass and travel upgrades for long-haul company events

## About Canonical

Canonical is a pioneering tech firm 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 of software. 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. Most colleagues at Canonical have worked from home since our inception in 2004.​ Working here is a step into the future and will challenge you to think differently, work smarter, learn new skills, and raise your game.

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 products. [Whatever your identity, we will give your application fair consideration.](https://canonical.com/careers/diversity/identity)

#LI-remote

## About Canonical

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Canonical publishes Ubuntu and delivers trusted open source software, security, and support to enterprises worldwide.
- **Entity Type**: Private (founder-funded, bootstrapped)
- **Headquarters**: Not publicly available in provided sources (commonly reported as London, UK)
- **Founded**: 2004
- **Founders**: Mark Shuttleworth

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Enterprise open source software, cloud infrastructure, and security.
- Target customers: B2B – enterprises, cloud providers, developers, and government organizations.
- Mission statement: "We amplify the impact of open source" – helping people and organizations tap into the power of open source to develop new products with speed and confidence.

## Products & Services
- **Ubuntu**: The world’s most popular Linux distribution for desktops, servers, and IoT.
- **Ubuntu Pro**: A single subscription providing security maintenance, compliance features, and support for the entire open source portfolio.
- **OpenStack**: Canonical’s distribution of the open source cloud platform for private and hybrid clouds.
- **Kubernetes (MicroK8s, Charmed Kubernetes)**: Lightweight and production-grade Kubernetes solutions.
- **Landscape**: Systems management and compliance tool for Ubuntu deployments.
- **LXD**: System container manager for running full Linux systems in containers.
- **Netplan**: Network configuration utility for Linux.
- **Vanilla Framework**: Open source CSS framework developed by Canonical’s web and design teams.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding – not applicable (bootstrapped). Annual revenue – not publicly available.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Founder Mark Shuttleworth is the primary investor. Partners include major cloud providers and hardware vendors (not explicitly listed in provided sources).
- **Growth Signals**: Scaled engineering headcount from 600 to 950 engineers (per blog post). Remote-first since inception in 2004. Over 80 nationalities represented.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Ubuntu ecosystem**: De facto standard for cloud and developer environments.
- **Remote-first culture**: Fully distributed since 2004, attracting global talent.
- **Open source leadership**: Deep involvement in communities (OpenStack, Kubernetes, etc.) and strong brand trust.
- **End-to-end portfolio**: From OS to applications, with consistent security maintenance for up to 15 years.
- **Rigorous hiring**: Manual, human-reviewed process that prioritizes culture fit and potential.

## Strategic Focus
- Expand enterprise adoption of Ubuntu Pro and managed open source services.
- Maintain leadership in cloud, container, and edge computing.
- Strengthen security and compliance offerings for regulated industries.
- Continue investing in open source communities and upstream projects.

## Why Work Here
- **Remote-first**: Truly distributed company with no central office; team members work from anywhere.
- **Culture**: Values of reliability, accessibility, precision, and adroitness. Emphasis on collaboration and open source ethos.
- **Small teams, big impact**: Engineering organized into nimble squads (950 engineers across ~50 teams) prioritizing agility and deep expertise.
- **Diversity**: Team from over 80 nationalities; equal opportunity employer.
- **Career progression**: Focus on impact and potential over rigid experience thresholds; opportunities to shift roles if a better fit is found.
- **Perks**: Personal development budget, learning opportunities, and a global, inclusive environment.

## Sources
1. [canonical.com/careers](https://canonical.com/careers)
2. [canonical.com/company](https://canonical.com/company)
3. [job-boards.greenhouse.io/canonical](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/canonical)
4. [canonical.com/blog/hiring-the-canonical-way](https://canonical.com/blog/hiring-the-canonical-way)

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- [Organisational Development Associate](https://feeny.ai/job/organisational-development-associate-canonical-americas-emea-cttbmv9adppw) — Americas / EMEA
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