Senior Backend Engineer (Entities Platform)

Location: Based in Sydney, Australia, with a hybrid working model that combines remote work and collaboration at the Sydney campus.

Company

Canva is a design platform company building cloud-based tools and infrastructure for creating and sharing visual content.

What you will do

• Own the full lifecycle of backend code, from design and development through testing, deployment, and ongoing improvements.
• Design and build secure, performant, scalable backend services and APIs for Canva's media platform.
• Develop and maintain distributed systems handling billions of operations, billions of media assets, and petabytes of data.
• Contribute to system ownership, operational health, production reliability, and on-call practices.
• Analyse root causes, solve complex technical problems, and coordinate delivery through milestones and roadblocks.
• Collaborate with engineers and senior stakeholders across teams to improve platform capabilities and development velocity.

Requirements

• Strong programming expertise in any language and willingness to work primarily with Java.
• Experience building scalable backend services and APIs.
• Solid understanding of distributed systems, databases, and cloud infrastructure fundamentals.
• Ability to write clean, tested, maintainable code that operates reliably at scale.
• Strong problem-solving, communication, planning, and independent learning skills.
• Genuine interest in cloud infrastructure and backend platform engineering at massive scale.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid flexibility with a Sydney campus designed for collaboration, focus, and connection.
• Equity packages aligned with company success.
• Inclusive parental leave for all parents and carers.
• Annual allowance supporting wellbeing, social connection, and home office setup.
• Flexible leave options for rest, personal needs, and community contribution.
• Virtual interviews and reasonable adjustments during the hiring process.

Hiring process

• Interviews are conducted virtually.
• Candidates should provide their pronouns and mention any reasonable interview adjustments they require.