Senior Software Engineer - Developer Experience

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 campus is in Sydney. We also have a campus in Melbourne and co-working spaces in Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. But you have choice in where and how you work. That means if you want to do your thing in the office (if you're near one), at home or a bit of both, it's up to you.

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:

Owning End-to-End Technical Solutions:

• Designing, documenting, and implementing complex infrastructure projects spanning multiple systems and domains
• Driving projects from initial design doc through stakeholder buy-in, implementation, testing, rollout, and adoption

Building Developer-Facing Tools & Automation:

• Creating pragmatic automation that eliminates repetitive manual work for engineers
• Building self-service platforms and CLIs that reduce dependency on platform teams
• Developing monitoring, alerting, and diagnostic tools that proactively surface issues

Collaborating & Enabling Engineering Teams:

• Partnering with engineering teams to understand pain points and gather requirements
• Translating business needs and technical constraints into scalable solutions
• Sharing knowledge through documentation, tech talks, and mentorship of junior engineers
• Participating in on-call rotation for critical platform services

You're probably a match if

• You have a strong background in Platform Engineering, with solid programming experience in Python and Go; experience with Java or TypeScript is a plus.
• You have a proven track record of building and operating systems at scale
• You have experience supporting large engineering organizations (1000+ engineers)
• You have strong experience with AWS or GCP (we use AWS)
• You have experience with Containerization & Orchestration: Thorough Kubernetes experience in production environments
• You have experience with CI/CD Pipelines: Built and maintained complex pipelines at scale (Jenkins, GitLab CI, Buildkite, etc.)
• You have experience with Bazel, Gradle, or similar monorepo build tools (Bazel experience highly valued)
• You have Observability experience: Implemented comprehensive monitoring, logging, and alerting
• Infrastructure as Code: Proficiency with Terraform, Ansible, or CloudFormation

Highly Valued (Nice to Have)

• Experience with release automation and deployment safety mechanisms
• Background in developer tooling
• Contributions to open source infrastructure or developer tools
• Experience integrating AI/LLM capabilities into developer workflows
• Prior work on build performance optimisation or test infrastructure at scale

About The Group

The Developer Experience (DevX) group makes software development at Canva faster, easier, and more enjoyable. Through three focused subgroups—Automation Pipeline, Developer Workflows, and Build & Collaboration—DevX provides the essential platforms, tools, and infrastructure that streamline the entire development journey. From optimising the inner loop and code collaboration, to automating testing and releases, to defining standards and partnering across platform teams, we're focused on removing friction and empowering Canvanuats to ship quality work with speed and confidence.

About the Role

As a Senior Software Engineer in DevX, you'll own critical infrastructure that directly impacts every engineer at Canva. You'll work across three potential domains depending on team placement:

• Automation Pipeline: Build and maintain CI/CD systems, test infrastructure, release automation, and deployment safety mechanisms
• Developer Workflows: Optimise developer experience across the SDLC including developer environments (local and remote), build system performance, IDE integrations, and AI-assisted development tooling
• Build & Collaboration: Maintain source control systems, monorepo tooling, build systems (Bazel), code review infrastructure, and developer environments

Your work will focus on high-leverage projects that eliminate systemic friction—whether that's reducing build times, automating release processes, or building self-service platforms that empower teams to move faster independently.

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 see AI as a powerful amplifier of creativity and technology at Canva. We’re evolving how we assess AI skills in our Technology hiring experience - you’ll tackle interactive, real-time challenges that reflect the kind of work we do. In some interviews, you may also be asked to solve a problem using an AI tool to show how you approach challenges with tech by your side. Your recruitment partner will walk you through what to expect. 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. We celebrate all types of skills and backgrounds at Canva, so even if you don’t feel like your skills quite match what’s listed above - we still want to hear from you!

Please note that interviews are conducted virtually.