Staff Software Engineer - Video Performance (Bay Area)

Location: San Francisco Bay Area, USA

Salary: $251,000–$329,000 per year

Company

Canva is a design platform whose Video Group builds rendering and creative technology used by millions of people.

What you will do

• Lead end-to-end performance strategy for video creation, including timeline scrubbing, real-time preview, export, and rendering.
• Profile and optimize C++ native engines, GLSL/HLSL shaders, and ML-powered effect pipelines.
• Build profiling tools, observability systems, and automated regression suites for Web, iOS, and Android.
• Define performance metrics covering FPS, jank, memory usage, thermal behavior, latency, and user-perceived fluidity.
• Collaborate with Video Engine and AI engineers to improve parallelism, cache locality, asynchronous processing, and system architecture.
• Use Metal, Vulkan, WebGPU, and other hardware-acceleration APIs to improve performance across consumer devices.

Requirements

• Strong proficiency in C++ and experience optimizing complex, multithreaded systems.
• Strong understanding of CPU/GPU architectures, memory hierarchies, and SIMD.
• Experience with graphics APIs such as OpenGL, Metal, or Vulkan.
• Expertise with profiling and diagnostics tools such as Perf, Instruments, Chrome DevTools, Systrace, or custom telemetry systems.
• Knowledge of video codecs, container formats, frame-accurate seeking, and composition.
• Ability to analyze telemetry at scale and influence partner teams on performance and long-term quality.

Nice to have

• Experience with modern systems languages such as Rust.

Culture & Benefits

• Flexible ways of working within the San Francisco hub.
• Equity package and company-contributed 401(k) retirement plan.
• Health benefits and inclusive parental leave for all parents and carers.
• Annual allowance for wellbeing, social connection, and office setup.
• Flexible leave options and virtual interviews.