Backend Software Engineer – Java – Core Libraries

This role sits within the Core Libraries Team. As a talented software engineer, you will be responsible for shaping the vision of libraries, frameworks, and tools used at Canva. We are part of API Platform group and our mission is to empower engineers to build efficient, reliable and secure traffic flow for billions of users.

At the moment, this role is focused on:

As an individual contributor, design and implement tools and libraries to improve the reliability of the Canva microservices

• Conduct and organize reliability experiments to identify possible scenarios in which failures might occur and verify the reliability measures
• Design and build services and tooling that help ensure each of Canva’s microservices are working optimally and are resilient to failures
• Have a widespread impact across the organization by facilitating and spearheading cross-team initiatives that raise the bar for reliability, velocity and security
• A deep investigation into production incidents followed up by applying the learning to code
• Researching, developing, and justifying the best choices in the form of design docs for features that will shape the future of Canva
• Identifying and addressing performance bottlenecks within the application and broader infrastructure
• Propose new approaches and solutions to ensure we future-proof Canva’s distributed cloud infrastructure as we scale. Participating in design meetings, hiring interviews, and code reviews

You’re probably a match if

• Three-plus (3+) years of commercial experience developing complex applications in Java; experience with other languages such as Kotlin, TypeScript etc is a big plus but it’s not necessary.
• Extensive experience in developing clean, readable, and maintainable code; The tools developed by the team are used by hundreds of developers at Canva so they need to be easily understandable.
• Experience with developing or maintaining libraries, frameworks or tools would be a big plus but is not necessary.
• Familiar with asynchronous or reactive programming techniques and associated patterns; At our scale, writing blocking code is often not an option
• Comfortable with computer science and engineering fundamentals: concurrency, data structures, and distributed systems
• Experience working in large distributed cloud environments (ideally AWS)
• Disciplined coding practices, experience with code reviews and pull requests, and a creative and conceptual problem-solving approach
• Strong communication and team collaboration skills, both written and verbal. A Canva engineer strives to understand the exact problem before jumping into writing code – look before you leap!
• An understanding of resiliency techniques and patterns – load balancing, throttling, back pressure, circuit breaking, etc; For Canva, reliability is a feature, and the Core Libraries and broader infrastructure teams aim to provide the best tools possible to the application engineers to ensure that Canva stays available at all times.

About the Group

The Core Libraries team is responsible for developing and maintaining internal libraries and tools utilized by Canva’s development teams. We are currently facing exciting challenges to uplift platform capabilities to prepare Canva for 1 Billion monthly active users in 2026.

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.

Apply now >