Senior Research Engineer - Audio & Video AI

Location: Team Engineering

Team: Country Sydney / Australia

About the Role

Join Canva's Audio-Video Storytelling Research Team within Canva Research, where we're pioneering intuitive audio storytelling tools that make design accessible to everyone. As a Senior Research Engineer - Audio & Video AI, you'll collaborate with Research Scientists to transform cutting-edge multimodal AI research into magical features that empower millions of Canva users worldwide. Based in our vibrant Sydney flagship campus, you'll work onsite with a passionate Engineering team focused on audio research alongside video and design innovation, driving Canva's mission to democratize design through AI-powered creativity. In this role, you'll bridge research and production by rapidly prototyping AI concepts, architecting generative models for audio/video content, and scaling them across distributed systems. You'll build robust ML pipelines, optimize for real-time performance, and curate high-quality datasets to fuel breakthrough multimodal learning. Partnering with product, design, and engineering stakeholders, you'll deliver technically feasible, high-impact solutions that enhance user experiences and keep Canva at the forefront of the design industry. Canva's collaborative, innovative culture thrives on kindness, curiosity, and pragmatic problem-solving. You'll take end-to-end ownership of complex initiatives in an ambiguous environment, communicate clearly, and co-create with diverse teams. With deep expertise in PyTorch, distributed training, and audio/video AI, you'll help shape the future of design storytelling. Don't tick every box? Apply anyway – we value passion and potential as much as experience!

Key Responsibilities

• Collaborate closely with Research Scientists to translate audio, video, and multimodal AI research into practical Canva features
• Rapidly develop prototypes to evaluate and demonstrate new AI concepts, models, and systems
• Design, develop, and implement innovative model architectures for audio/video content generation and analysis
• Build sustainable, scalable ML pipelines supporting CI/CD, deployment, evaluation, and monitoring of generative models
• Optimize models for efficiency, latency, and throughput across large distributed systems
• Enhance and maintain high-quality datasets and annotations for multimodal learning
• Partner with cross-functional teams including product, design, and engineering to deliver high-impact solutions
• Drive end-to-end ownership of complex AI initiatives from research to production
• Contribute to Canva's mission of making design accessible through intuitive audio-video AI tools
• Share knowledge and mentor junior engineers in ML best practices

Required Qualifications

• Deep experience developing AI models including Diffusion Models, GANs, or Transformers with real-world applications
• Proven success managing and optimizing large-scale distributed training across 100s of GPUs
• Strong understanding of ML principles and hands-on experience with PyTorch for developing performant models
• Solid engineering practices including clean code, rigorous testing, CI/CD workflows, and production observability
• Experience working with large-scale audio and/or video datasets including preprocessing, feature extraction, and perceptual quality evaluation
• Bachelor's or higher degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or related field
• 5+ years of experience in ML research engineering roles

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in audio storytelling or multimodal AI research
• Background in video processing and generative AI for design tools
• Contributions to open-source ML projects or publications in audio/video AI
• Familiarity with Canva's design ecosystem or creative AI applications
• Experience scaling ML models for consumer-facing products

Required Skills

• PyTorch expertise for model development and optimization
• Distributed training across GPU clusters
• Audio/video dataset preprocessing and feature extraction
• Generative AI models (Diffusion, GANs, Transformers)
• ML pipeline engineering (CI/CD, monitoring)
• Perceptual quality evaluation for multimedia
• Clean code and rigorous testing practices
• Cross-functional collaboration and communication
• Thriving in ambiguous, fast-paced environments
• End-to-end project ownership
• Knowledge sharing and team co-creation
• Scalable infrastructure trade-offs
• Prototype development for rapid iteration
• Design-thinking for user-centric AI features

Benefits

• Equity packages to share in Canva's success
• Inclusive parental leave policy supporting all parents and carers
• Annual Vibe & Thrive allowance for wellbeing, social connection, and office setup
• Flexible leave options to recharge and support personal needs
• Sydney flagship campus with collaborative onsite environment
• Regular team magic moments, connectivity, and fun activities
• Professional development opportunities in cutting-edge AI research
• Health and wellness programs tailored to creative professionals

Canva is an equal opportunity employer.