As a Staff Software Engineer on the API Platform team at Canva, you will play a leading role in defining the technical roadmap and architecture for Canva’s backend API platforms as the company scales toward serving 1 billion monthly active users. You will design, implement, and evangelize best practices in API architecture, service communication, and distributed systems while mentoring engineers and driving cross-team initiatives.
What You'll Do
- Play a leading role in defining the technical roadmap and architecture for API platforms as Canva evolves
- Help shape the roadmaps for critical building blocks of Canva’s backend systems
- Become an authority in the area of API architecture and service communication
- Define and evangelise best practices for software architecture and layering, service performance, resiliency patterns and best practice library consumption
- Make coding contributions and conduct effective PR reviews
- Design and be a hands-on implementer of intricate aspects of the system
- Propose innovative approaches and solutions to help future-proof Canva's distributed cloud infrastructure
- Engage with others to shape improvements through writing clear design documents, influencing others' designs, and running design meetings
- Guide the implementation of major projects
- Assist in realistic task breakdown and keep engineers in sync within and across teams
- Use excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Provide guidance and mentorship to other engineers
- Assist engineers in their professional development and help them navigate technical challenges
- Have a widespread impact across the organisation by facilitating and orchestrating cross-team initiatives
- Set a higher standard for reliability, velocity, and security
What We're Looking For
- Ten-plus (10+) years of commercial experience developing sophisticated distributed web applications on the JVM
- Experience writing Java
- Experience with planning and executing architectural changes
- Creative and conceptual problem-solving approach as opposed to a framework or library focus
- Strong communication and teamwork skills, both written and verbal
- Facilitating collaboration across teams and fostering a positive working relationship between stakeholders and engineers
- Ability to create a culture of trust, respect, and open communication
- Experience with guiding and mentoring other engineers
- Helping unblock technical challenges and being an all-around role model
- Expert in asynchronous or reactive programming techniques and associated patterns
- Deep knowledge of computer science and engineering fundamentals: concurrency, data structures, and distributed systems
- Understanding of resiliency techniques and patterns – load balancing, throttling, back pressure, circuit breaking, etc.
- Experience working in large distributed cloud environments (ideally AWS)
Nice to Have
- Experience with other backend languages such as Scala, Python and Typescript
- Experience with RPC frameworks, like gRPC
- Strong working knowledge of modern networking protocols such as HTTP/2, protobuf and WebSockets
Technical Stack
Java, JVM, Scala, Python, Typescript, gRPC, HTTP/2, protobuf, WebSockets, AWS
Team & Environment
Part of the Product Platform group within Canva; API Platform team responsible for tools and libraries enabling reliable scaling of Canva’s backend services. The team consists of 4 teams working collaboratively to support Canva's growth.
Benefits & Compensation
- Equity packages - we want our success to be yours too
- Inclusive parental leave policy that supports all parents & carers
- An annual Vibe & Thrive allowance to support your wellbeing, social connection, office setup & more
- Flexible leave options that empower you to be a force for good, take time to recharge and supports you personally
Work Mode
Choice in where and how you work — office (if near one), at home, or a bit of both. This role is remote across ANZ with hybrid options available in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide.
Canva is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.
