Senior Backend Engineer - (Java) - Teams & Education

Location: Team Engineering

Team: Country Melbourne / Australia

About the Role

Join the team redefining how the world experiences design. At Canva's Teams & Education SuperGroup, we're powering SaaS products like Canva for Enterprise, Canva for Education, and Canva Pro that serve millions of users globally and drive Canva's growth. As a Senior Backend Engineer (Java), you'll lead the delivery of sharing and permissions features across our flagship design tools, content management, and brand experiences, ensuring seamless collaboration for teams worldwide. You'll tackle Canva's most complex technical challenges by designing intricate system components, proposing innovative solutions to future-proof our platforms, and guiding major projects with architectural diagrams and clear communication. Working in our collaborative Engineering team, you'll mentor fellow Canvanauts, advocate for resilient best practices, and drive cross-team initiatives that elevate our standards for performance, security, and velocity—all while contributing to products that empower education and enterprise users to create without limits. Our hybrid Melbourne environment blends innovative problem-solving with Canva's design-focused culture. You'll collaborate with product, design, and growth teams in a diverse group of 200+ Canvanauts passionate about 10x growth. If you thrive on distributed systems mastery, creative architecture, and fostering engineering excellence, bring your Java expertise to help shape the future of collaborative design at Canva.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead delivery of sharing and permissions features across Canva's design experience, content management, and brand tools
• Propose innovative approaches to future-proof Canva's product decision platforms and business outcomes
• Engage stakeholders through design documents and meetings to shape system improvements
• Advocate for best practices enhancing service performance, resilience, and adaptability
• Design and implement complex system components tackling intricate technical challenges
• Guide major project implementation with task planning, architectural diagrams, and clear communication
• Mentor engineers in professional development and technical problem-solving
• Drive organization-wide impact through cross-team initiatives elevating reliability, velocity, and security standards
• Collaborate with design and product teams to create intuitive, scalable backend experiences
• Contribute to Canva's Teams & Education products serving millions of global users

Required Qualifications

• Extensive experience developing distributed web applications with deep Java expertise
• Proven track record planning and executing complex architectural changes with creative problem-solving
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills for collaborating across stakeholders and engineers
• Demonstrated experience mentoring and guiding engineering teams through technical challenges
• Mastery of computer science fundamentals including concurrency, data structures, and distributed systems
• Hands-on experience in large distributed cloud environments (AWS preferred)
• Familiarity with cloud-native technologies such as Kubernetes and Terraform

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with large-scale distributed asset management systems
• Background in SaaS products for enterprise, education, or NFP audiences
• Proven ability to drive cross-team initiatives improving reliability, velocity, and security
• Experience shaping product decision platforms through design documents and meetings

Required Skills

• Java (expert level)
• Distributed systems architecture
• Concurrency and multithreading
• Data structures and algorithms
• AWS cloud infrastructure
• Kubernetes orchestration
• Terraform infrastructure as code
• Resiliency patterns (load balancing, throttling, circuit breaking)
• Microservices design
• API development and design
• Technical documentation and design docs
• Mentoring and technical leadership
• Cross-functional collaboration
• Problem-solving in complex environments
• Communication (written and verbal)
• Agile methodologies

Benefits

• Hybrid work model in vibrant Melbourne, Australia combining collaboration and flexibility
• Unlimited PTO to recharge and maintain work-life balance
• Canva for Teams subscription plus generous product discounts for personal use
• Learning stipend and internal growth programs for continuous skill development
• Health and wellness benefits including gym memberships and mental health support
• Parental leave and family-friendly policies supporting diverse life stages
• Stock options as part of Canva's employee equity program
• Global team events and social activities fostering Canva's collaborative culture

Canva is an equal opportunity employer.