Senior Backend Engineer

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. This role is based in Sydney or Melbourne, 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 Backend roles at Canva can vary significantly depending on the team—each focused on solving meaningful problems at scale. You might help build scalable APIs powering millions of user interactions, improve system performance and reliability at scale, or contribute to shared services and internal tools. With multiple teams hiring backend engineers, we’d love to learn what excites you most and find the right fit for your passions and strengths. You’ll work closely with product managers, designers, and frontend engineers to deliver end-to-end experiences that have real user impact. Whether you're designing new systems or maintaining critical infrastructure, your work will play a key role in Canva’s mission to empower the world to design. 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. Your day to day activities will consist of solution design and hands-on software development - working closely with leads, designers, and product managers to deliver features and functionality to our customers all over the world.Once you’ve settled in and have a comfortable grasp of the product, environment, and processes, you’ll be given more responsibility and start leveraging your previous experience - bringing new ideas to the table concerning everything from feature development, process improvement, and product suggestions.Owning backend services end-to-end, schema and API design, async/distributed processing (queues, workers), through to deployment, monitoring, and incident response in production.Designing and building MCP servers and agent-facing tooling that let AI assistants call directly into Canva's backend.Developing and iterating on technical proposals - outlining how solutions will be structured and developed.Developing solutions you’ve designed from the ground up through to deployment into production.Identifying and addressing performance bottlenecks within the application and broader infrastructure.Participating in design meetings, hiring interviews, and code reviews.Performance debugging, benchmarking and building awesome things in general.Driving ongoing improvements.Building and extending strategic connectors on major AI platforms (OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Microsoft, Amazon).Working with external partners on integration quality and new capabilities. You're probably a match if You have commercial experience developing complex web applications.You are strong hands-on technically. You read, write, and review production code regularly. Our stack is Java (backend microservices) and TypeScript/React (frontend); you need to have exceptional knowledge and be effective across both, or demonstrate you pick up languages fast.You’re experienced in developing APIs with backend web frameworks, and MCPs.You’re comfortable writing high-performance, reusable code for UI components, including appropriate testing.You have a working knowledge of the AWS platform.Firmly grounded computer science and engineering fundamentals including concurrency, multithreading, data structures, solution design, architecture, and design patternsYou enjoy collaborating with team members and and are open to feedback that helps you grow.You have genuine curiosity about AI, developer platforms, and the evolving AI tooling landscape. You follow what's happening with LLMs, MCP, and AI agents because you find it interesting.You thrive in fast-paced, ambiguous environments where priorities shift and you make good calls with incomplete information.You have strong product sense: you understand why you're building something, not just howYou understand the product lifecycle, technical debt, and quality at speed. You know when to push back and when to ship.You bring clear written and verbal communication, working across teams, external partners, and leadership regularly,You lead by example, promoting Canva's values, a no-blame mentality, and inclusive culture Engineering at Canva Join a vibrant engineering community solving complex problems for millions of users, world wide. Here, engineering is about more than writing great code. It’s about rapidly iterating to deliver real value for users – building a product that empowers the world to design. We care deeply about craft and collaborate closely to achieve hugely ambitious goals. We mentor and support one another generously, grounded in a culture of ownership, purpose, and a shared commitment to excellence. 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 range 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 tooInclusive parental leave policy that supports all parents & carersAn annual Vibe & Thrive allowance to support your wellbeing, social connection, office setup & moreFlexible 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. 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. Please note that interviews are conducted virtually