Audio Designer

Location: Team Content

Team: Country Sydney / Australia

About the Role

Join Canva's Content Studio → Elements team as an Audio Designer, where you'll shape how millions of creators worldwide find the perfect sound to bring their designs to life. Based in our vibrant Sydney flagship campus (with hybrid flexibility), you'll partner closely with template designers, product teams, and AI specialists to ensure every audio asset delights at the right moment. As Canva scales its audio library and AI capabilities, you'll champion quality selection practices, create scalable curation systems, and make audio effortlessly discoverable—turning complex creative challenges into simple, magical experiences for our global creator community. In this role, you'll blend deep audio craft expertise with systems thinking to build 'golden sets,' refine metadata taxonomies, and create practical playbooks that empower designers everywhere. You'll analyze usage signals to continuously improve our library, consult across teams with clear rubrics for AI-assisted selection, and establish ethical guardrails ensuring every sound respects copyright, consent, and creative integrity. This is hands-on work where your judgment shapes Canva's audio future, from curating shortlists that spark inspiration to training non-experts through simple checklists and search recipes. You'll thrive in our fast-paced, collaborative culture by working autonomously across functions—communicating crisply with design, product, and engineering while driving alignment through tidy docs and actionable insights. Whether defining negatives that prevent poor selections or facilitating quality reviews that level up AI tools, your work directly impacts creator delight. At Canva, we celebrate diverse skills and backgrounds, offering equity, inclusive leave, wellbeing allowances, and a hybrid model that trusts you to find your perfect balance. If you love audio craft and want to scale creative magic globally, let's create together.

Key Responsibilities

• Champion the right audio track at the right moment across Canva surfaces, partnering with designers to turn briefs into clear, usable shortlists
• Curate and maintain golden sets of audio assets with simple accept/reject principles and comprehensive negative examples
• Improve audio findability through precise naming conventions, tagging systems, and lightweight taxonomy
• Analyze usage patterns, search signals, and feedback to refresh shortlists, fix metadata, and retire underperforming assets
• Consult across Content, Design, and Product teams on audio craft—defining rubrics and conducting human-in-the-loop quality reviews for AI-assisted selection
• Support AI audio surfacing by providing exemplar sets, negatives, and simple rules to improve model retrieval accuracy
• Create practical playbooks, checklists, and short training sessions enabling non-experts to select audio confidently
• Document clear guardrails and principles around audio ethics, copyright, consent, and safety
• Publish search recipes and exemplars that help creators discover perfect audio quickly
• Collaborate with template designers to ensure audio perfectly complements visual storytelling

Required Qualifications

• Advanced expertise in audio craft across music, sound effects (SFX), and voice production
• Proven experience working autonomously in cross-functional teams with designers, product, and engineering
• Demonstrated ability to create clear documentation, playbooks, and training materials for non-experts
• Experience with audio metadata management, taxonomy, and improving discoverability through naming and tagging
• Fluency in AI-assisted creative workflows including prompt engineering, model evaluation, and human-in-the-loop quality reviews
• Strong understanding of audio ethics including copyright, likeness/consent, privacy, and safety principles
• Comfortable analyzing usage data, search signals, and feedback to drive actionable improvements
• Experience consulting across teams and facilitating quality reviews with clear rubrics

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience scaling audio asset libraries for design platforms or creative tools
• Background in music production, sound design for video/UI, or voice talent direction
• Familiarity with Canva's creative ecosystem or similar design-first platforms
• Experience with audio AI tools and vendor evaluation
• Spreadsheet proficiency for metadata management and analysis
• Previous work creating 'golden sets' and negative examples for consistent selection

Required Skills

• Advanced audio production (music, SFX, voice)
• Sound design judgment and curation expertise
• Cross-functional collaboration and stakeholder management
• Clear technical writing and documentation
• Metadata and taxonomy management
• Data analysis (usage metrics, search signals)
• AI workflow fluency (prompts, model evaluation)
• Ethical audio principles (copyright, consent, privacy)
• Training and knowledge transfer facilitation
• Autonomous prioritization in fast-paced environments
• Spreadsheet proficiency for asset management
• Quality rubric development
• Search optimization strategies
• Creative problem-solving for discoverability
• Human-in-the-loop AI review processes
• Playbook and checklist creation

Benefits

• Equity packages so our success becomes yours too
• Inclusive parental leave policy supporting all parents and carers
• Annual Vibe & Thrive allowance for wellbeing, social connection, and office setup
• Flexible leave options empowering personal recharge and community impact
• Hybrid work model across Sydney flagship campus and other Australian locations
• Delightful, collaborative culture with moments of magic and connectivity
• Regular learning opportunities in cutting-edge design and AI technologies
• Health and wellness programs supporting work-life harmony
• Global team environment celebrating diverse backgrounds and perspectives

Canva is an equal opportunity employer.