Senior Backend Engineer - Java - User Platform

Join the team redefining how the world experiences design.

Hey, g'day, mabuhay, kia ora,你好, 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 Sydney campus is uniquely Canva - an extension of our Surry Hills neighbourhood. It’s a thoughtfully designed space with plenty of room to collaborate, focus, and connect.
This role is based in Sydney, and we’re looking for someone who calls it home. Our hybrid way of working gives you the flexibility to work remotely, and to come together on campus for meaningful in-person collaboration and connection when it matters most. We trust our Canvanauts to choose the balance that empowers them and their team to achieve their goals.

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:

You’ll have the opportunity to work on some of Canva’s most essential and high-performance backend systems — the User Platform.

Our mission is to scale our authentication platform to support 10x the number of users we have today. To achieve this, you’ll:

• Collaborate within a backend-focused engineering team to extend and scale the backbone of Canva’s microservice landscape — the User Product.
• Design, build, and maintain high-performance systems for user authentication and management.
• Develop reusable and scalable building blocks that enable teams across Canva to build on top of the User Platform.
• Partner with stakeholder teams to evaluate requirements, align timelines, and optimise solutions for customer value.
• Participate in on-call rotations and contribute to incident response as needed.
• Enhance the experience for large Enterprise and Education customers, supporting their advanced organisational needs.

You're probably a match if

• You have ex perience collaborating effectively with teammates and communicating clearly.
• Are firmly grounded in computer science and engineering fundamentals, including concurrency, multithreading, data structures, solution design, architecture, and design patterns.
• Have a strong background in designing, building, and operating high-performance, large-scale Java backend systems.
• Bring a problem-solving mindset to complex challenges.

Nice to have:

• Experience with authentication and authorisation systems (a huge plus).
• Familiarity with SQL.
• Experience with DynamoDB.
• Communicate clearly with s trong written and verbal skills.

About the team

In User Platform, we break up existing services and build new ones from scratch to prepare Canva’s authentication platform for the future. We care about software design and its impact on the user. We constantly aim to get the most performance out of AWS resources, and along the way, we ship new features to improve the user experience for Enterprise and Education users.

About the role

As a senior backend engineer, you will be collaborating to build up and scale the backbone of Canva’s User Management: the User Product. The User Product team plays an essential role in keeping our auth pipeline extendable and scalable for our 260 million monthly active users.

You will be involved in designing, building, and maintaining new features to improve and extend the experience for Pro and Enterprise teams and organisations by providing world-class authentication and user management experiences. This role entails constant collaboration with other teams across Canva, giving you a lot of exposure to what other teams are working on and giving you the opportunity to connect the dots.

What's in it for you?

Achieving our crazy big goals motivates us to work hard - and we do - but you'll experience lots of moments of magic, connectivity and fun woven throughout life at Canva, too. We also offer a stack of benefits to set you up for every success in and outside of work.

Here's a taste of what's on offer:

• Equity packages - we want our success to be yours too
• Inclusive parental leave policy that supports all parents & carers
• An annual Vibe & Thrive allowance to support your wellbeing, social connection, office setup & more
• Flexible leave options that empower you to be a force for good, take time to recharge and supports you personally

Check out lifeatcanva.com for more info.

Other stuff to know

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.

Please note that interviews are conducted virtually.