Technical Program Manager- Engineering
We’re constantly working towards making Canva the best place to work, for everyone. We believe deeply that bringing together diversity of thoughts, perspectives and expression is key for building the best product for our equally diverse community all around the world. We celebrate uniqueness and whatever makes you, you and encourage everyone who wants to help us transform the way the world designs, to join us on this journey. We value all different types of experiences. If you don’t think you quite meet all of the qualifications, we’d still love to hear from you.
About Us
At Canva, our mission is to democratise design and empower creativity for anyone and everyone, on every platform. Inspired by a team of talented thinkers, an amazing culture and a remarkable growth trajectory – we’re out to change the world, one design at a time.
Since launch in August 2013, we have grown exponentially, amassing over 60 million monthly active users across 190 different countries who have created more than 6 Billion designs. We are one of the world’s fastest-growing technology companies and we have only achieved about 1% of what we want to do.
About the Technical Program Managers
As a Technical Program Manager (TPM), it is your mission to work closely with senior managers and development teams to build a sustainable culture of delivery. You will lead complex, multi-disciplinary programs and be equally comfortable working with leadership to set strategic goals and clarify priorities, as you are working with teams to communicate program status, escalate issues and manage dependencies as you are discussing technical trade-offs with an engineer.
About the Engineering Specialty
Engineering is at the heart of Canva — from the simple, straightforward, and creative UI, to the performant, computer science challenges of scaling and running a continuous engineering environment.
The Canva code base was built to scale from day one, yet this is a constant challenge. With adherence to fundamentals and first principles, the team strives to use the most appropriate processes and tools for the tasks at hand, aiming to strike that carefully measured balance between getting things done and long-term maintainability of the domain model, code base and supporting infrastructure.
We are looking for a TPM to join our team to help drive the delivery of our Scale Engineering roadmap, to support our CTO with initiatives reaching across our team and technology stack and to co-ordinate engineering foundational teams (e.g. Frontend, Backend, Machine Learning, Infrastructure, Data, etc).
This is an exciting, hands-on role. You’ll ensure we deliver on solving our hardest engineering scale challenges and you’ll have a massive impact on the future of our engineering culture and technology environment (For a deeper look into Canva's engineering culture, check out our Canva Engineering Blog, sharing insights on how we get things done).
what you'll be doing
- Monitor and track delivery status across multiple teams and projects
- Promote accountability towards sustainable program delivery
- Technically unblock teams in execution
- Manage open issues relating to program delivery
- Assess and mitigate risksManage dependencies across teams and groups
- Facilitate effective, timely and transparent team decision making practices
- Communicate a shared vision for Canva’s future engineering culture and technology
- Ensure an appropriate degree of consistency in planning, documentation and core practices across teams to ensure meaningful velocity and promote our ability to scale how teams work across Canva
- Facilitate continual improvement rituals to build the effectiveness of our engineering teams
- Build a culture and environment to achieve excellence and innovation
- Build partnerships with cross-functional teams to influence decisions, drive alignment and prioritisation
- Partner with Engineering Leadership to facilitate the delivery of Engineering’s highest priority, complex and multi-disciplinary initiatives
Experience you’ll need
- A minimum of 5 years TPM experience at a SaaS company
- Deep understanding of Agile product development processes
- Knowledgeable in technical concepts, systems and practices
- Background as a software engineer looking to scale your impact
- Experience working with Product Managers, Designers and Engineers to deliver key company initiatives
- Comfortable with ambiguity in a fast-paced environment with shifting priorities
- A natural communicator who leads through influence, not authority
- A love for navigating complexity and tackling ambiguous problems
- Process-oriented but flexible in approach
- Motivated to provide an inclusive and psychologically safe environment for our diverse team to collaborate together, in a timely fashion, towards shared goalsIntrospective focus to continually improve the effectiveness of Canva’s teams
- Leadership capability to ensure clarity, alignment and accountability to achieve our crazy big goals
- Ability to think strategically but also able to make crazy big goals happen. This role will be very hands-on!
Being a Force for good.
One of our core values at Canva, “Being a force for good” means we are actively working towards a world that isn't just good for a small few, but one that’s good for everyone. We believe deeply that bringing together diversity of thoughts, perspectives and expression is key for building the best product for our equally diverse community. To achieve this, we need to constantly work towards making Canva the best place to work, for everyone.
We make hiring decisions based on your experience, skills and passion. If you’re keen to apply and need reasonable adjustments or would like to note which pronouns you use at any point in the application or interview process, please let us know.