Simon Aronsson
Senior Engineering Manager
Summary
Engineering leader with experience building and scaling high-performing, globally distributed teams in cloud and observability domains. Accountable for multi-team product areas, managing managers and driving strategy, delivery excellence, and cross-functional alignment across product, SRE, and field engineering. Proven track record improving roadmap execution, standardizing platforms for enterprise delivery, and building high-retention engineering organizations with strong engagement. Combines deep technical expertise with pragmatic business alignment.
Experience
Senior Engineering Manager
Nov 2022 — Present
Canonical Ltd · Remote, Global
- Accountable for Canonical's global Observability offering — leading strategy and execution across product design, implementation, and delivery.
- Built and scaled three teams totaling 12 engineers across two engineering managers, developing modern, low-operations open-source observability and cloud networking software.
- Led global cross-functional initiatives spanning field engineering, product engineering, and SRE.
- Standardized the observability platform across all commercial cloud engagements, strengthening the enterprise offering and reducing customer integration overhead.
- Built a high-retention engineering organization with engagement scores 30% above company average.
Engineering Manager
Oct 2021 — Nov 2022
Canonical Ltd · Remote, Global
- Led and delivered product engineering of the company's next-generation observability offering with a team of five engineers.
- Reduced time-to-market significantly and ensured timely delivery on agreed roadmaps and targets.
- Took the team from delivering on 50% of their roadmap goals to consistently hitting 90%.
Head of Developer Relations
Jan 2020 — Sep 2021
Grafana k6 · Remote, Global
- Launched, staffed and paved the ground for the Developer Relations program at k6.
- Built a process for constructing roadmaps and a community impact review framework.
- Launched a full revamp of the product documentation, the weekly k6 office hours YouTube show, and the k6 extension ecosystem offering.
- In early 2021, we were acquired by Grafana to strengthen their story around performance and reliability engineering.
Senior Engineering Consultant
Jan 2018 — Jan 2020
Arctic Bit AB · Norrköping, Sweden
- Provided consulting services, training and coaching in software development, system architecture, agile coaching, and Linux.
- Delivered workshops and mentoring around Engineering Excellence to customers including Axis Communications, Informator, MindRoad, Edument, Advania, and HiQ Ace.
- Frequently spoke at industry conferences — over 20 sessions in 2019 alone.
Senior Engineering Consultant
Jul 2016 — Dec 2017
HiQ Ace · Linköping, Sweden
- Delivered consulting engagements across enterprise clients, focusing on software development, agile transformation, and engineering excellence.
- Organized recurring internal upskilling programs and workshops, increasing the number of certified Scrum practitioners by 80%.
- Selected as one of four to establish a new development center in Linköping, defining engineering processes and architectural standards.
- Designed and implemented a structured technical interview framework to support hiring, improving evaluation consistency and long-term quality standards.
Skills
Leadership & Strategy
- Organizational Design
- Engineering Strategy
- Hiring & Talent Development
- Performance Management
- Agile & DevOps Transformation
- Cross-Functional Leadership
Technical
- Cloud Platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)
- Observability & SRE
- Distributed Systems
- Enterprise Architecture
- Go, JS, TS, Python, C#
- Efficient AI usage
Other
- Public speaking
- Documentation
- UML & modelling
Education
Informatics · Högskolan Dalarna, Falun, Sweden
2013 — 2016
Honors & awards
Docker Captain · Docker Inc
2021 — 2024
Google Developer Expert — Cloud · Google
2022 — 2024
Azure Community Hero · Microsoft
2022
Publications
97 Things Every Cloud Engineer Should Know · Curated by Emily Freeman, O'Reilly Media
2021