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      Canonical

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      Canonical interviews FAQs

      • Candidates applying for Senior/Staff/Principal Engineer roles take an average of 30 days to get hired, when considering 1 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Canonical overall takes an average of 51 days.
      • Common stages of the interview process at Canonical as a Senior/Staff/Principal Engineer according to 1 Glassdoor interviews include:

        IQ intelligence test:  25%

        Personality test:  25%

        One on one interview:  25%

        Skills test:  25%

      • Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -

        1. Software Engineer(96) ;
        2. Engineering Manager(20) ;
        3. Sales Development Representative (SDR)(14) ;
        4. Senior Software Engineer(12) ;
        5. Sales(11) ;
        6. Director(8) ;
        7. Manager(8) ;
        8. Product Manager(8) ;
        9. Technical Support Engineer(8) ;
        10. Software Developer(6) ;
        11. Software Engineer I(6) ;
        12. Project Manager(5) ;
        13. Sales Executive(5) ;
        14. Cloud Operations Engineer(4) ;
        15. Engineer(4) .

      Senior/Staff/Principal Engineer Interview

      Jul 28, 2025
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Canonical in Jun 2025

      Interview

      I started the interview process on June 25th, 2025. It started with the written interview, timed technical assessment (ISBN check digit algorithm and one more), and the GIA. There are tools online to practice each step, so they aren't too bad. I had three interviews with different team members, which were all good. The engineers seem to enjoy their jobs, but they all criticized the recruitment process due to its length. They asked me about my Python assessment and some general knowledge Python questions like data types, function decorators, etc, Linux system skills like difference between a process/thread, etc. You can use ChatGPT to quiz yourself and prepare for the interviews. Then, I had to take a personality assessment which took about 8 minutes. I then talked with a Talent Scientist to discuss my resume, learn more about Canonical, and then discuss salary expectations. The talent scientist asked for my salary expectations, and I said it was hard to give an estimate because the title was "Senior/Staff/Principal Engineer". She pushed for an estimate, so I gave a range for each- roughly 230k - 275k for my years of experience given the range of roles. She then asked me what my current salary was, which is illegal in my state. I declined to answer, so she asked me what my minimum expected salary would be. I said 230k- a healthy raise. She said it would be difficult to meet but thanked me for the interview. I got a rejection email five days later. I can only assume the salary expectation was too high. In total, I probably spent 10-15 hours on the interview process only to get an automatic rejection email despite passing all previous stages. No feedback on what to improve. The interview process gets a bad reputation. IMO it's not too bad, but it is time consuming. Only spend time applying here if you really want to work for Canonical or don't mind spending extra time during the application. The people I spoke to were great, but I question whether the interview process is really helping them. Also be warned that they have a bring your own laptop policy and expect you to travel internationally at least twice per year for their in-person meetups (pro or con depending on what you like).

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Write a function in Python to check if an input string is a valid ISBN.
      Answer question


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    • Jobs at Canonical

      46 jobs in United States
      Senior/Staff/Principal Engineer
      Douglas, Scotland
      ·
      £80K - £138K /yr
      (Glassdoor est.)
      View job
      Software Engineering Manager - Container and Virtualisation Infrastructure
      Douglas, Scotland
      ·
      £41K - £74K /yr
      (Glassdoor est.)
      View job
      Engineering Manager, Commercial Systems
      Douglas, Scotland
      ·
      £80K - £138K /yr
      (Glassdoor est.)
      View job
      Software Engineering Director
      Douglas, Scotland
      ·
      £41K - £74K /yr
      (Glassdoor est.)
      View job
      Salesforce/NetSuite Engineering Manager, Commercial Systems
      London, England
      ·
      £88K - £120K /yr
      (Glassdoor est.)
      View job
      View all Senior/Staff/Principal Engineer Jobs