Senior Backend Engineer - Entities Platform

Join the team redefining how the world experiences design.

Hey, g'day, mabuhay, kia ora,你好, hallo, vítejte!

Thanks for stopping by. We know job hunting can be a little time consuming and you're probably keen to find out what's on offer, so we'll get straight to the point. 

Where and how you can work
Our flagship Sydney campus is uniquely Canva - an extension of our Surry Hills neighbourhood. It’s a thoughtfully designed space with plenty of room to collaborate, focus, and connect.

This role is based in Sydney, and we’re looking for someone who calls it home. Our hybrid way of working gives you the flexibility to work remotely, and to come together on campus for meaningful in-person collaboration and connection when it matters most. We trust our Canvanauts to choose the balance that empowers them and their team to achieve their goals.

What you’d be doing in this role

As Canva scales change continues to be part of our DNA. But we like to think that's all part of the fun. So this will give you the flavour of the type of things you'll be working on when you start, but this will likely evolve.

At the moment, this role is focused on:

• You'll own the full lifecycle of your code - from initial design and development through to testing, production deployment, and ongoing improvements.
• You'll produce secure, performant, and pragmatic designs that meet requirements while considering system-wide impacts across our platform.
• You'll write clear, concise, and well-tested code that adheres to Canva's engineering principles and style guides, setting a strong foundation for future development.
• You'll proactively pick up unowned or less desirable work that enables the team to move faster, demonstrating initiative and team-first thinking.
• You'll gain ownership of systems or components within our platform, contributing to their operational health including participating in on-call practices.
• You'll solve problems by analysing root causes and proposing alternative solutions, building on the ideas of others to deliver creative solutions.
• You'll plan and coordinate your workload effectively, identifying milestones, outcomes, and measures of success while resolving competing priorities.
• You'll provide reasonable estimations and reliably execute on technical proposals, advancing projects through challenges and roadblocks to achieve team objectives.

You're probably a match if

We're seeking an ambitious backend engineer ready to accelerate their growth by working alongside a highly skilled team on complex distributed systems. You should be eager to learn from other engineers while confident enough to contribute your own ideas. The ideal candidate thrives in environments where technical challenges operate at massive scale - where even small optimisations can save millions in infrastructure costs. You'll need strong programming fundamentals (in any language) and the ability to quickly adapt to our Java-based backend systems. Most importantly, you should be excited about cloud-based platform engineering - building the foundational backend systems that enable hundreds of other engineers to deliver value faster.

• Strong programming expertise in any language, with willingness to work primarily in Java for backend development
• Solid understanding of distributed systems, databases, and cloud infrastructure fundamentals (AWS experience preferred)
• Experience building scalable backend services and APIs
• Demonstrated ability to write clean, tested, maintainable code that operates reliably at scale
• Self-directed learning mindset - able to leverage the expertise around you while independently driving your growth
• Strong communication skills to effectively collaborate with senior stakeholders and cross-functional teams
• Problem-solving aptitude with the ability to break down complex backend challenges into manageable solutions
• Genuine interest in cloud infrastructure and backend platform engineering at massive scale

About The Team

Entities Platform is a newly formed team at the heart of Media Platform, the foundational infrastructure that powers every design at Canva. We're an experienced team of engineers responsible for the backend systems that manage billions of media assets, serving users across the globe while handling petabytes of data. Our team builds and maintains the unified, cloud-based platforms that enable seamless media experiences across Canva - from the moment a user uploads an image to when they export their final design. We're building systems that handle extraordinary volumes of data, solving the distributed systems challenges that come with supporting millions of users globally.

About the Role

As a Software Engineer joining our Entities Platform team, you'll work alongside other engineers on Canva's most critical backend infrastructure. With an experienced team you'll be immersed in an environment of technical excellence where you'll rapidly develop your skills through exposure to complex, large-scale cloud systems. You'll contribute to platform systems including critical components that must handle billions of daily operations with near-perfect reliability. The team organizes work based on skills, experience, and need, ensuring you'll gain comprehensive exposure across all domains we own. Working at Media Platform's extraordinary scale provides unique growth opportunities - whether you prefer rapid advancement or steady progression, you'll find paths that match your ambitions.

What's in it for you?

Achieving our crazy big goals motivates us to work hard - and we do - but you'll experience lots of moments of magic, connectivity and fun woven throughout life at Canva, too. We also offer a stack of benefits to set you up for every success in and outside of work.

Here's a taste of what's on offer:

• 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

Check out lifeatcanva.com for more info.

Other stuff to know

We make hiring decisions based on your experience, skills and passion, as well as how you can enhance Canva and our culture. When you apply, please tell us the pronouns you use and any reasonable adjustments you may need during the interview process. 

Please note that interviews are conducted virtually.