Staff Backend Engineer – Product Insights Enablement – Java

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:

• Play a leading role in defining the technical roadmap and architecture for the services powering our internal platforms for product decisioning. Advocate for best practices that enhance service performance, resilience, and adaptability.
• Establish yourself as an expert in developing platforms that facilitate decision-making while being deeply integrated with the company’s data ecosystem.
• Propose innovative approaches and solutions to future-proof Canva’s product decision platforms and deliver on business outcomes.
• Engage with others to shape the improvements through writing design documents and running design meetings.
• Design and implement the most intricate aspects of the system, showcasing your aptitude for tackling complex technical challenges effectively.
• Guide the implementation of major projects, planning task breakdown and keeping engineers in sync using excellent verbal and written communication skills, including architectural diagrams.
• Provide guidance and mentorship to other engineers, assisting them in their professional development and helping them navigate technical challenges.
• Have a widespread impact across the organization by facilitating and orchestrating cross-team initiatives that set a higher standard for reliability, velocity, and security.

You’re probably a match if you have:

• Extensive experience developing distributed web applications on the JVM, with a deep understanding of Java (other JVM languages like Scala or Kotlin are a plus, though we primarily use Java 17).
• A track record of successfully planning and executing complex architectural changes, with a strong focus on creative problem-solving rather than reliance on specific frameworks or libraries.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, both written and verbal, with the ability to foster a positive working environment across stakeholders and engineers.
• Proven experience mentoring and guiding engineering teams, unblocking technical challenges, and serving as a role model.
• Mastery of computer science and engineering fundamentals such as concurrency, data structures, and distributed systems, along with a strong grasp of resiliency techniques like load balancing, throttling, back pressure, and circuit breaking.
• Hands-on experience working in large distributed cloud environments (AWS preferred) and familiarity with cloud-native technologies such as Kubernetes and Terraform.
• Bonus: Experience with large-scale distributed data processing systems (e.g., Snowflake, Clickhouse) and expertise in SQL and data modeling best practices.

Nice to have:

• Experience working with interface design tooling
• Understanding the concept of AB testing and experimentation
• Experience in full-stack development

About the team

Product Insights Enablement (PIE) is a group of 4 teams dedicated to creating reliable insight-as-a-service platforms that assist the entire company in planning and decision-making. Our team consists of a diverse mix of engineers, product managers, and product designers collaborating to reach these goals. We focus on providing capabilities such as user behaviour analytics, experimentation (A/B testing), feature flags and organisational metrics. We build internal platforms to scale decision making and remove guesswork from the product development process.

About the Role

This role is a leadership position for the whole group. As a versatile staff software engineer, you will be responsible for shaping the vision of the platforms our teams build. You will partner with other engineer and product leads including our Data Scientists, Frontend Engineers, Product Managers and Designers to build impactful solutions. We are part of the larger supergroup called Product Platform with a mission is to empower more informed product decision at the scale of Canva.

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.

Apply now >