Senior Backend Engineer - Export

Canva; Sydney; On-site; AUD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Canva is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to join the Export team within the Editing Platform group. You will work on resolving complex Chromium issues with a staff engineer, own the PDF post-processing pipeline for accessibility, and build monitoring and testing to guard against upstream changes.

You will contribute to reliability and performance of the download/export workflows and document architectural decisions to grow the team's knowledge base.

Qualifications

• Proficient in C++ and Java; strong debugging in multi-language stacks.
• Experience with rendering pipelines, graphics programming, or print production systems.
• Knowledge of PDF specifications (PDF/UA, WCAG) is a plus when generating/exporting PDFs.

Responsibilities

• Partner with staff engineer to investigate and resolve complex Chromium issues, including upgrade breakages and rendering race conditions.
• Own the PDF accessibility post-processing pipeline and implement tagging/compliance for Enterprise PDFs.
• Build monitoring and testing infrastructure to catch Chromium changes before production.
• Design accessibility solutions resilient to Chromium output structure changes.
• Contribute to export infrastructure challenges including format optimization and distributed systems reliability.
• Document complex Chromium behavior and architectural decisions for team knowledge.

Skills

C++

Java

Distributed systems

Tools

PDF rendering libraries

Chromium knowledge

Job description

Join the team redefining how the world experiences design.

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.

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:

• Partnering with our staff engineer to investigate and resolve complex Chromium issues — including upgrade breakages, rendering race conditions, and incidents caused by upstream changes
• Owning the PDF accessibility post-processing pipeline and implementing features that add proper tagging and compliance (PDF/UA, WCAG) to exported PDFs for Enterprise customers
• Building monitoring and testing infrastructure that catches Chromium changes before they reach production
• Designing accessibility solutions resilient to Chromium's frequent output structure changes, so we're not constantly rebuilding
• Contributing to broader export infrastructure challenges including format optimisation and distributed systems reliability
• Documenting complex Chromium behaviour and architectural decisions to build team knowledge and reduce bus factor

You're probably a match if

• You're comfortable with C++ when you need to dig into complex third-party codebases
• You're a solid Java backend engineer — that's what our product is built on
• You've debugged layered systems where the problem spans multiple codebases and languages
• PDF specification knowledge or experience with PDF generation and post-processing
• A background in rendering pipelines, graphics programming, or print production systems
• Experience maintaining systems where upstream dependencies change frequently

About the team

The Export team sits within the Editing Platform group and owns one of Canva's most critical workflows — transforming designs into downloadable files that users can share, print, and bring to life. Over 50 million people download their creations through us every week. We focus on three things: reliability users can count on, speed that keeps pace with their creativity, and flexibility across every format and use case.

Beyond the main download flow, we power print production, enable AI model training, generate thumbnails, and make sure every new editor feature works seamlessly when someone hits that download button. As a Senior Backend Engineer here, your technical depth translates directly into user delight — and your work enables teams across Canva to move faster and ship with confidence.

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.

We celebrate all types of skills and backgrounds at Canva so even if you don’t feel like your skills quite match what’s listed above - we still want to hear from you!

Please note that interviews are conducted virtually.