There has been a few requests for me to share my experience interviewing with Canonical for a UX Designer role and I hope this would be a helpful experience for anyone who’s interested and passionate about open source projects.
What is Canonical?
Canonical is founded by Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu project, which is known for being a popular open-source Linux distribution for OS, Servers, and Cloud Computing. Of course, there are many other products that many might have heard of under Canonical such as Snapcraft, MAAS, Juju, Vanilla Framework and so many more.
What I like about Canonical?
Ubuntu Linux provides their Operating System as a free open-source software for anyone from anywhere to be able to experience and contribute to it. In my opinion, this tells me that it is a user-centric product. It provides a working prototype to users and allow users to contribute and share their feedback on the product.
How did I apply?
I applied directly through the portal and received the first interview invitation after around 3–4 weeks.
I trimmed down my resume from 3 pages to a single page resume that highlights only the relevant stuff.
When I applied, I did not expect them to come back, because this job has been posted for at least 5 months and direct portal is usually hard to predict.
What does the process look like?
- Video Call interview
- Team meeting interview
- On-site Design Challenge
Caveat: In some cases you might not get a calendar invitation but an email confirmation on the date, so be spontaneous.
Video Call Interview (with the Director of Design and Frontend Lead)
This is a very introductory interview which you will get to introduce yourself, tell them about your interests, go through a project in your portfolio, and get to know Canonical.
Team meeting Interview
After the VDO call, I went forward with the first onsite interview and get to meet the team at the London office. The office was really nice and calm. I can feel the friendly vibe from everyone around me. The office is located 10 mins from London Bridge and it was a very friendly area where you can see the river and many nice restaurants nearby. To be honest, Borough Market is one of my favorite places in London and I felt very lucky that the office is located 10 mins from there.
In this interview, you will get to meet the team members such as the Program Manager, Senior UX Designer, and UX Designers. This is more of a cultural fit interview, where they want to know what you’ve done in the past and your understanding of open source projects, their current projects, and core values.
You will get to learn their processes and perks, including traveling to different countries for Sprint planning.
I think if you have contributed to an open source project, this would be a plus. I’m currently working on an Open source project called Keylime, which is a TPM/IMA security project based in python. So this helped me share a few stories about my contribution to the project.
After getting to know each other, the team then provided me a high-level description of the task for my next interview → a UX challenge.
On-site Design Challenge
There are two tasks for this interview. (I will try not to get into details because of the NDA.)
The first task evaluates you as a “Strong Communicator”. You will be given a link to one of their products and you need to explain it in your own words in 10 mins. You can create a presentation or do a whiteboard session or create a visual to help you communicate your understanding.
The second task evaluates your “Design Thinking” skills. You will be given a vague design challenge, where you are free to make assumptions. You need to walk your audiences through your design process to showcase your ability as a good communicator and a strategic designer. This is a 2 hour task that you need to summarize it in 15 mins.
During this interview there will be 6–8 people, who are team leaders or people who will be working with you joining in as part of the audience. Since, it’s a remote driven company, some audiences might join remotely. So make sure your output(s) accommodates people joining remotely as well. However, the point of this design challenge is to create a discussion as a team. So even if you did a whiteboard session, the team will help you set up the camera to accommodate your white-boarding session.
Since this is possibly the last interview (you might get another interview in some cases), my advice is to practice, practice, and practice.
About 30 mins after the final interview, I received a call from the Director of Design that I got the job.
I have to admit that I did not expect to hear back, because of the long wait. I know of Canonical because Ubuntu Linux has been part of a project that I worked on. I’m extremely excited to work on more open source projects and hope to be able to share more stories about my open source contribution and other cool projects at Canonical moving forward.