General Counsel at Canonical

About the Role

Canonical is hiring a General Counsel to lead its global Legal and Compliance function. Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer, you will oversee legal, regulatory, governance, commercial contracting, intellectual property, open source licensing, compliance, litigation, and strategic legal matters.

You will lead a distributed legal team across EMEA and the Americas while helping Canonical strengthen its legal and governance framework as it prepares for future public-market requirements.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the global Legal and Compliance function across EMEA and the Americas.
• Build and manage a distributed legal leadership team.
• Set priorities, service standards, performance expectations, and reporting processes.
• Lead legal preparations for public-market readiness, including governance, entity structures, policies, delegated authority, disclosure controls, and records.
• Advise the CEO, COO, CFO, Board, and Board committees on legal and governance matters.
• Own the commercial contracting framework, including templates, negotiation positions, approvals, and escalation processes.
• Lead intellectual property and open source licensing strategy, including copyleft and trademark matters.
• Oversee compliance across data protection, privacy, export controls, trade compliance, anti-bribery and corruption, competition, and AI regulation.
• Manage litigation, disputes, regulatory matters, and external legal counsel.
• Advise on mergers and acquisitions, partnerships, strategic alliances, and financing activities.
• Work closely with product, engineering, security, finance, and other business functions.

Requirements

• Strong academic background at secondary and university level.
• Degree in Law or equivalent qualification.
• Active licence to practise law in an EMEA or Americas jurisdiction.
• Significant senior in-house legal experience within a global technology or software business.
• Experience leading distributed legal teams across regions and time zones.
• Experience hiring, developing, managing, and holding legal professionals accountable.
• Experience building or restructuring an in-house legal function.
• Strong experience negotiating commercial technology contracts, including enterprise software, subscriptions, reseller agreements, hardware agreements, cloud services, and related contracts.
• Knowledge of open source licensing, including permissive and copyleft licences.
• Experience with public company governance, listing preparation, board support, disclosure, and controls, or strong readiness in these areas.
• Expertise in at least two of the following areas: data protection and privacy, intellectual property and trademarks, export controls and trade, competition, or disputes.
• Excellent written and spoken English.
• Strong drafting, presentation, communication, judgement, and interpersonal skills.
• Willingness to travel internationally two to four times per year for company events.

Desirable Skills

• Experience supporting an IPO or working as legal counsel within a listed company.
• Technical or engineering background.
• Strong understanding of software development and delivery.
• Experience with subscription or recurring-revenue business models.
• Experience restructuring an in-house legal function.
• Legal qualification in more than one jurisdiction.

What Canonical Offers

• Fully distributed work environment.
• Twice-yearly in-person team sprints.
• USD 2,000 annual learning and development budget.
• Bi-annual compensation reviews.
• Performance-driven annual bonus or commission.
• 40 days of annual leave, including public holidays and company-wide holiday periods.
• Maternity and paternity leave.
• Team Member Assistance Program and Wellness Platform.
• International travel opportunities.
• Priority Pass lounge access.

About Canonical

Canonical is a global technology company behind Ubuntu, a widely used open source platform supporting public cloud, data science, AI, engineering, and IoT initiatives.

The company is founder-led, profitable, and fully distributed, with employees working across multiple countries and regions.

How to Apply

Interested candidates should review the full requirements and submit their application through Canonical’s official careers platform.