Usability Engineer - User Science

Responsibilities

• 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.
• We are hiring a Usability Engineer for our Design Team.
• User Science is an evolving design discipline at Canonical. While we have long incorporated diverse research on user needs into our products, the mission of the newly formed User Science team is to expand beyond traditional models of UX research, integrating user needs end-to-end in development processes and quality standards across the company.
• Collecting and synthesizing user data: Developing user insights in diverse formats, scientifically analyzing data from A/B tests, usability studies, and other methodologies to create compelling findings.
• Prototyping for impact: Building lightweight prototypes, data visualization dashboards, or automation scripts to enhance broader consumption of research.
• Building research scalability and interoperability: Strengthening research ops infrastructure, making key methodologies more accessible, actionable, and repeatable.
• Fostering a learning culture: Contribute to the evolving definition of User Science through user-centered training, resource development, and outreach.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in a related field such as Design, Engineering, Data Science or similar, or a compelling narrative about your alternative chosen path.
• Tinkerer mindset: A passion for hacking, exploring, and building creative solutions, whether through technical prototyping, scripting, or research tooling.
• A talent for optimization: A strong alignment towards building research ops, systematizing best practices, and creating frameworks for broader knowledge-sharing.

Languages