Python Backend Engineer (m/f/x) - AI Platform Enablement

Join the team redefining how the world experiences design.

Servus, 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, Australia but Austria is home to part of our European operations. And you have choice in where and how you work, we trust our Canvanauts to choose the balance that empowers them and their team to achieve their goals.

Fun fact, a big part of our Austrian operations is developing the AI product within Canva to help reimagine how artificial intelligence can be used in design. Pretty cool ha!

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.

Please note, this is not a model building role. We work on a common core of platform functionality that is generalizable across domains, and that means we skew heavily towards data engineering, backend service development, and ML infrastructure. This role is also not a stepping stone to adjacent model development roles.

At the moment, this role is focused on:

• Design, build, and maintain data pipelines that power AI research and experimentation workflows

• Develop backend services and APIs that give researchers clean, reliable access to data at scale

• Work directly with researchers and AI builders to understand their data needs and translate them into robust engineering solutions

• Improve data infrastructure reliability, observability, and performance

• Debug and resolve data quality issues, identifying root causes and sharing learnings broadly

• Contribute to internal tooling and paved roads that make it easier for the team to work with data consistently

You're probably a match if

• You have strong Python expertise with experience building production-grade data pipelines or backend services

• You have experience with data engineering patterns, including batch processing, streaming, data quality, and pipeline orchestration

• You have experience working with Kubernetes or similar container orchestration environments

• You have solid software engineering fundamentals, including clean APIs, testing, and observability

• You have experience supporting or working closely with research, data science, or ML teams

• You have strong debugging and problem-solving skills

• You have the ability to manage multiple workstreams and communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders

• You bring a collaborative mindset with a genuine focus on enabling others to move faster

• Nice to have: You have familiarity with PyTorch or other ML frameworks, with enough understanding to follow what researchers are doing with the data

About the team

Canva's AI Platform Group serves as the foundation for AI innovation across the company. Within this group, the AI Enablement teams provide critical support to researchers and AI builders globally, helping them navigate platform capabilities, access the data they need, and accelerate the journey from experimentation to production.

This role sits at the intersection of data engineering and backend development, with a focus on enabling researchers and AI builders to access high-quality data efficiently. The MLE will own data pipelines end-to-end, build backend services that expose data to research workflows, and work closely with researchers to understand and solve their data access needs.

The role demands someone who finds satisfaction in making others faster, building infrastructure that is reliable, well-documented, and easy to use. Strong engineering fundamentals and a pragmatic approach to problem-solving are more important here than ML modelling experience.

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 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.

At Canva we value fairness, and we strive to provide competitive, market-informed compensation whilst ensuring internal equity within the team in each region. We make hiring decisions based on your skills, experience and our overall assessment of what we observed and learnt in the hiring process. The starting salary for this position is EUR 70,000. When calculating offers, we make salary decisions based on market data and candidates' skills and experience.

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.

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.