Senior Backend Engineer - Video Effects

Location: Team Engineering

Team: Country Beijing / China

About the Role

Join Canva's Video Effects team as a Senior Backend Engineer and power the next generation of AI-driven creative tools. In this role, you'll build robust, scalable backend services that form the backbone of our intelligent effects pipeline, enabling millions of creators worldwide to transform ideas into stunning visual stories. While multimedia experience is a plus, this is fundamentally a high-performance backend engineering position where you'll tackle effect asset management, content distribution, and tooling that integrates seamlessly with Canva's design platform. Based in our Beijing office with a hybrid model, you'll collaborate within the innovative Design Experience Supergroup, blending engineering excellence with creative impact. Your day-to-day will involve designing APIs for asset storage and retrieval, optimizing for global scale with smart caching and delivery strategies, and developing tools that empower internal teams to iterate rapidly. You'll work closely with ML engineers, frontend developers, and product managers to ensure our systems are reliable, efficient, and ready for production at Canva's massive scale—serving hundreds of millions of users. Expect to dive deep into performance tuning, distributed systems challenges, and building fault-tolerant infrastructure that unlocks new possibilities in video editing. At Canva, we champion a collaborative, maker culture where engineers are empowered to ship features that delight users and drive innovation. You'll grow your expertise in large-scale systems while contributing to emerging areas like AI-powered effects, all within a supportive team that values work-life balance, continuous learning, and bold ideas. If you're passionate about performance engineering and excited to shape the future of multimedia creation, this is your opportunity to make a global impact.

Key Responsibilities

• Build scalable backend services supporting the effect creation and serving pipeline
• Design and maintain APIs for effect asset storage, retrieval, and metadata management
• Develop internal tooling to streamline workflows for creators and product teams
• Optimize system performance, reliability, memory efficiency, and latency
• Collaborate with frontend, ML, and infrastructure teams to integrate services into Canva's ecosystem
• Implement caching, delivery strategies, and observability for global effect distribution
• Ensure systems are production-ready, fault-tolerant, and maintainable at scale
• Drive performance improvements for intelligent video effects used by millions
• Contribute to backend infrastructure that powers AI-driven design experiences
• Monitor and enhance system health through metrics, alerting, and proactive optimizations

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience building and operating distributed systems or microservices at scale
• Strong programming proficiency in C++, Java, Go, or Python
• Deep understanding of backend architecture, caching mechanisms, and performance tuning
• Experience with large-scale infrastructure and deployment systems
• Proven track record of designing and maintaining production-ready, fault-tolerant systems
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
• Ability to collaborate across teams in a fast-paced, product-driven environment

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with multimedia or video processing infrastructure
• Familiarity with content delivery networks (CDNs) and global distribution strategies
• Exposure to machine learning pipelines or AI-powered creative tools
• Previous work on effect asset management or metadata systems
• Contributions to open-source projects or high-scale creative platforms

Required Skills

• Distributed systems design and microservices architecture
• C++, Java, Go, or Python programming expertise
• Backend API development and REST/gRPC protocols
• Caching strategies (Redis, Memcached) and performance optimization
• Database design (SQL/NoSQL) and metadata management
• Containerization (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes)
• Monitoring tools (Prometheus, Grafana) and observability
• Cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or equivalent)
• Collaborative problem-solving and cross-functional communication
• Product-minded engineering with user impact focus
• System reliability engineering and fault tolerance
• Multimedia processing pipelines (bonus)
• Global content distribution and CDN optimization
• Agile methodologies and CI/CD pipelines
• Code review, testing, and documentation best practices

Benefits

• Flexible hybrid work model in Beijing with collaborative team environment
• Canva+ subscription for unlimited access to premium design tools
• Generous parental leave and family-friendly policies
• Professional development budget for conferences, courses, and certifications
• Health and wellness programs including gym memberships and mental health support
• Stock options and performance bonuses in a high-growth company
• Regular team offsites, hackathons, and innovation workshops
• Unlimited vacation policy with encouragement to recharge
• Delicious daily meals, snacks, and beverages at our Beijing office

Canva is an equal opportunity employer.