Senior Software Engineer - Web Engine Team - Infra

Senior Software Engineer - Web Engine Team - Infra

Join the team redefining how the world experiences design.

Hey, g'day, mabuhay, kia ora,, hallo, vítejte!

Thanks for stopping by. We know job hunting can be a little time consuming and you're probably keen to find out what's on offer, so we'll get straight to the point.

Where and how you can work

Our flagship campus is in Sydney. We also have a campus in Melbourne and co-working spaces in Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. But you have choice in where and how you work. That means if you want to do your thing in the office (if you're near one), at home or a bit of both, it's up to you.

What you'd be doing in this role

As Canva scales change continues to be part of our DNA. But we like to think that's all part of the fun. So this will give you the flavour of the type of things you'll be working on when you start, but this will likely evolve.

At the moment, this role is focused on:

• Investigating and resolving production issues across the video export backend, including latency regressions, worker failures, and deployment safety gaps.
• Improving monitoring, alerting, and observability for production workers across the video export pipeline.
• Optimising Kubernetes worker configurations, including resource reservations, node pool strategies, and autoscaling behaviour.
• Building automation and tooling to catch quality regressions before they reach production.
• Managing and evolving Terraform-based infrastructure for video export services.
• Participating in on-call rotation for a tier 1 service.
• Collaborating with teams across Video, Cloud Compute, Core Export, NVE, and Data Science on cross-cutting infrastructure concerns.
• Contributing to documentation, runbooks, and knowledge sharing.

You're probably a match if

• You have strong experience with backend systems in Java or a similar language.
• You have a solid understanding of Kubernetes: deployments, resource management, node pools, autoscaling, and debugging pod/container issues.
• You have experience with AWS infrastructure (EC2, EBS, spot instances, networking).
• You have familiarity with infrastructure-as-code, ideally Terraform.
• You have experience with monitoring and observability tools (metrics, alerting, dashboards). Familiarity with OpsGenie or similar incident management tooling is a plus.
• You have strong debugging and investigation skills, with a track record of diagnosing production performance issues.
• You are comfortable working in a high-ownership environment where you're expected to identify problems, propose solutions, and drive them to completion.
• You have clear communication skills, both written and verbal.

Nice to have:

• Experience with video processing pipelines or media infrastructure.
• Experience with cost optimisation for cloud infrastructure (right-sizing, spot strategies, bin-packing).
• Familiarity with canary deployments and progressive rollout strategies.

About the Team:

The Web Engine Infra team is essentially the Video Export team at Canva. We own and manage the end-to-end process of exporting Canva designs to MP4 or GIF. This covers the full backend pipeline from design input through to rendered video output, including scene composition, rasterisation, output processing, and integration with the Native Video Engine (NVE).

Our systems handle millions of video exports per day and we are responsible for making sure those exports are fast, correct, and cost-efficient. The work is deeply technical and infrastructure-focused, spanning Kubernetes worker orchestration, AWS infrastructure management, monitoring and observability, Terraform-managed deployments, and performance engineering. We sit within the Video Platform subgroup and work closely with teams across Video. We value pragmatic problem-solving, clear communication, and taking ownership of production systems.

About the Role:

As a Senior Backend Engineer on Web Engine Infra, you will focus primarily on reliability, performance, and cost efficiency of the video export backend. This is an infrastructure-heavy role where you will spend your time investigating production issues, improving monitoring, optimising resource usage, and building the tooling and automation that keeps a tier 1 service running well.

You will work closely with other engineers on the Web Engine team, as well as cross-functional partners across Video, Cloud Compute, Core Export, NVE, and Data Science. This role requires comfort with ambiguity, strong debugging instincts, and a genuine interest in understanding how systems behave under load.

Other stuff to know

We see AI as a powerful amplifier of creativity and technology at Canva. We're evolving how we assess AI skills in our Technology hiring experience - you'll tackle interactive, real-time challenges that reflect the kind of work we do. In some interviews, you may also be asked to solve a problem using an AI tool to show how you approach challenges with tech by your side. Your recruitment partner will walk you through what to expect. We make hiring decisions based on your experience, skills and passion, as well as how you can enhance Canva and our culture.

When you apply, please tell us the pronouns you use and any reasonable adjustments you may need during the interview process. We celebrate all types of skills and backgrounds at Canva, so even if you don't feel like your skills quite match what's listed above - we still want to hear from you!

Please note that interviews are conducted virtually.