Technical Artist – Video Effect

At Canva’s Design Experience supergroup, we’re on a mission to build powerful yet simple tools that empower anyone to design anything. Within the Video group, we focus on creating seamless, intuitive, and high-performance video editing experiences for users across the globe. We work at the intersection of creativity and technology—bringing together engineers, designers, and creatives to push the boundaries of what’s possible in visual storytelling. From real-time rendering to advanced effects, our work directly shapes how users bring their ideas to life through video.

About the Role 

As a Technical Artist, you’ll sit at the intersection of engineering, rendering technology, and creative production. You’ll play a key role in building and optimizing visual effects for Canva’s video editing tools—working with custom rendering engines and internal algorithm capabilities to deliver high-quality, real-time visual experiences. This role is perfect for someone who thrives in blending artistic vision with technical execution, and who is passionate about pushing visual fidelity while maintaining performance at scale.

What you’ll do (responsibilities)

• You’ll design and develop visual effects for video editing, including scene effects, facial effects, and post-processing pipelines
• You’ll build and optimize materials and shaders using Canva’s rendering engine and internal tooling
• You’ll collaborate closely with engineers and designers to deliver visually compelling and performant features
• You’ll leverage DCC tools to prototype and translate creative ideas into production-ready effects
• You’ll write and maintain scripts (Lua, JavaScript) to enable dynamic and interactive visual behaviors
• You’ll continuously explore new rendering techniques and industry trends to push the quality of Canva’s video experience

What we’re looking for

• You have strong experience working with real-time rendering pipelines, with the ability to build materials, shaders, and visual effects that balance visual quality and performance
• You’re familiar with modern rendering or game engines (e.g., Unreal Engine 5), with a foundational understanding of Blueprints and C++
• You’re comfortable using scripting languages such as Lua or JavaScript to drive dynamic and interactive visual behaviours
• You bring experience from high-quality visual environments (e.g., 3A games, digital humans, or interactive media)
• You have worked on systems such as face customization or character creation, with an understanding of scalable visual systems
• You have exposure to Procedural Content Generation (PCG), and ideally experience integrating with AI/AIGC-driven workflows
• You have knowledge of character pipelines, including motion capture, animation optimization, or character physics/dynamics (nice to have)
• You’re confident using DCC tools to prototype and translate creative concepts into production-ready assets
• You collaborate effectively with engineers, designers, and product teams, and are motivated by empowering users to create high-quality video content