Principal Partner Engineer — Ecosystem (AI)

Location: San Francisco, United States; work on Pacific Time hours and collaborate with engineering teams in AEST.

Salary: USD 286,000–332,000 per year.

Company

Canva is a visual design platform with an external Ecosystem platform connecting AI systems through MCP, REST APIs, Apps-in-Canva, and middleware PaaS.

What you will do

• Drive technical decisions and alignment between strategic partners and Canva engineering teams.
• Set technical direction for Canva's external platform surface, including investment, deprecation, and platform evolution.
• Validate partner proposals against Canva architecture and create prototypes or sample code to support decisions.
• Coordinate product-line engineering across MCP, REST APIs, Apps-in-Canva, and middleware PaaS.
• Carry emerging platform direction to partners and lead technical relationships for flagship AI platform engagements.
• Shape partner roadmaps, technical spikes, and decisions across Product and Engineering.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience, including work across partner engineering, platform engineering, and product.
• Experience building and shipping developer platforms used by external developers.
• Ability to move between product roadmaps, system design, partner negotiations, and technical writing.
• Deep knowledge of modern AI platform technologies, including MCP, tool use, and agentic API design.
• Experience working in heterogeneous, fast-moving product codebases and raising the technical bar across engineering.

Nice to have

• Hands-on experience shipping or integrating with MCP, including Anthropic, OpenAI, Copilot, or Gemini variants.
• Strong TypeScript, React, and server-side JavaScript skills, with the ability to read Java backend code.
• Experience turning ambiguous partner input into clear engineering decisions adopted by Product and Engineering.

Culture & Benefits

• Flexible choice of work location and working style across Canva campuses and coworking spaces.
• Equity packages.
• Inclusive parental leave for parents and carers.
• Annual Vibe & Thrive allowance for wellbeing, social connection, and office setup.
• Flexible leave options.

Hiring process

• Interviews are conducted virtually.
• Applicants can provide pronouns and request reasonable interview adjustments.