Senior Backend Engineer - Research 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!

About the Team

The Research Enablement EU team sits within Canva's AI research group. The team's role is to bridge the gap between research science and product. We take the models and experiments coming out of the research teams and make them production-ready. In practice, that means owning model deployment and rollout pipelines, building and maintaining the infrastructure and tooling that lets researchers iterate faster, and running the data collection systems that feed ML training.

The team works closely with AI Platform and the broader research leads to keep Canva's generative AI capabilities moving from lab to product reliably and at scale.

About the Role

As a backend engineer you’ll be part of the team bridging the gap between research and production. Partnering closely with researchers, and stakeholders across our Gen AI group, you’ll ensure experimental code is production ready, build internal apps and services, and create the tooling and processes that let multiple model variants ship safely and quickly. Your work shortens the research-to-user loop, reduces duplication, and ensures our ML features are reliable, observable, and easy for other teams to adopt.

What you’ll do 

You will have the opportunity to work on some of the most cutting edge AI features at Canva and collaborate with teams across the group to bring the features to production effectively and make sure they perform reliably at scale.

Additionally, you will participate in planning, development and maintenance of building blocks such as training data pipelines and internal tools like data visualisers and aggregators to support our researchers in their end-to-end workflows. This happens in close collaboration with our stakeholders, including data scientists, MLEs, PMs and designers.

• Collaborate closely with stakeholders, PMs, and cross-functional teams to create innovative and scalable solutions

• Design, develop, and maintain high-performance, scalable, and reusable backend components

• Identify and implement best practices and methodologies for backend engineering

• Help foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement

• Participate in code reviews, ensuring adherence to coding standards and best practices

• Contribute to the overall architecture and design of backend systems, ensuring maintainability and extensibility

You're likely a match if you have

• Firmly grounded computer science and engineering fundamentals including concurrency, multithreading, data structures, solution design, architecture, and design patterns

• Strong background in designing, building and running large scale Java or Python backend systems

• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills

• Ability to work collaboratively in a team environment, taking ownership of projects and outcomes

• Experience with big-picture thinking and attention to detail

• Ability to work in a fast-paced, dynamic environment

Nice to have

• Experience in Machine Learning is a huge plus

• SQL experience

• DynamoDB experience is a plus

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.

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.