Principal Production Engineer (Distributed Systems)

TL;DR

Principal Production Engineer (Distributed Systems): Leading the reliability and scalability of Canva's infrastructure with an accent on distributed systems, JVM performance, and multi-region architecture. Focus on defining the production engineering engagement model, solving high-scale technical risks, and elevating the technical bar across the organization.

Location: Adelaide, Australia

Company

Canva is a global design platform redefining how the world experiences design.

What you will do

• Define the engagement model for how Production Engineering pairs with product and infrastructure teams.
• Lead the most technically complex engagements, including sharding, multi-region architecture, and JVM performance at scale.
• Set the technical standard for production engineering and serve as the archetype for future hiring calibration.
• Partner with engineering leadership to ensure Production Engineering is upstream of problems on the product roadmap.
• Develop the measurement story by defining and tracking metrics for incident severity and duration.
• Mentor staff and mid-level engineers to grow production engineering capability across the organization.

Requirements

• Experience owning reliability in large-scale distributed systems.
• Technical leadership experience in embedded models working across team boundaries.
• Hands-on depth in Java, Go, Rust, C++, or a comparable systems language.
• Proficiency in Linux internals, Kubernetes (scheduler level), and AWS in production.
• Expertise in sharding, replication, failure modes, and consistency tradeoffs.
• Must be based in Adelaide, Australia

Nice to have

• Enterprise SaaS background.
• Deep JVM internals knowledge, including GC tuning and thread profiling.
• Experience with data store migrations or multi-region architectures.

Culture & Benefits

• Equity packages.
• Inclusive parental leave policy supporting all parents and carers.
• Annual Vibe & Thrive allowance for wellbeing, social connection, and office setup.
• Flexible leave options to recharge and support personal needs.

Hiring process

• Interviews are conducted virtually.
• Interactive, real-time challenges reflecting actual work.
• Problem-solving exercises utilizing AI tools.