Staff Frontend Engineer - Video

Canva; Sydney; Hybrid; AUD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity packages

Inclusive parental leave

Vibe & Thrive allowance

Flexible leave options

Job summary

Canva is seeking a technically hands-on Senior Technical Lead for the Video Editor team in Sydney. You’ll steer technical direction, review designs, mentor engineers and own features past launch in a growing product used by many creators.

You’ll work on a data model for video, ensure reliable operations, and shape frontend-backend decisions with TS and React, while staying involved in code to lead by example.

Qualifications

• Led a team as technical lead and earned direction from peers.
• Hands-on coding while guiding architecture.
• Owned complex, interactive web apps used by many users.
• Strong in TypeScript and React with ability to make architectural calls.

Responsibilities

• Advise on technical direction across projects and review design docs.
• Mentor engineers and set engineering standards through code reviews.
• Own features across their lifecycle from planning to rollout and observability.
• Collaborate with backend and data teams to align frontend choices with the product.
• Ensure reliable operations and monitoring post-launch.

Skills

TypeScript

React

Hands-on coding

Technical leadership

Systems thinking

Tools

WebGL

Job description

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 remains part of our DNA. But we like to think that's all part of the fun. This will give you a flavour of the type of things you'll be working on when you start, but it will likely evolve.

You'd be the technical lead the Video Editor team leans on. Not a detached architect, someone still in the code, who also has the judgement and the reach to keep several streams of work pointing the same way.

At the moment, that means:

• Advising on technical direction across the team's projects, reviewing design docs, and helping project captains land the right approach.
• Starting with the Audio Studio team, then broadening across the wider Video Editor group as you find your feet.
• Working with a new data model built specifically for video, replacing the fixed-page model the editor inherited, which opens up a lot more room for effects.
• Owning what you build past launch. Monitoring, rollout, observability, and keeping the things you're responsible for genuinely operational.
• Setting the engineering standard for the team through code review, mentoring and the habits you bring.

You're probably a match if

• You've been the technical lead on a team of engineers, and people came to you for direction because you'd earned it.
• You're still hands‑on. Writing code is part of how you lead, not something you've delegated away.
• You've owned complex, interactive web applications used by a lot of people, and you can talk about what broke and what you changed.
• You're strong in TypeScript and React, and comfortable making architectural calls that hold up as a product grows.
• You think in systems. You understand how a frontend decision lands on the backend, and the other way round.
• You take operational ownership seriously. Measure things, you watch rollouts, and you don't consider a project done at launch.

Nice to have

• Audio engineering or audio processing experience. Genuinely useful here, but not something we'd hold out for.
• Video editing, multimedia or content creation tools.
• Real-time collaborative editing, including conflict resolution patterns like OT or CRDT.
• Graphics programming or WebGL.
• C++.
• Design tools or other creative software.

About the team

The Video Editor team owns the experience of editing video at Canva: the timeline, the video‑specific features that show up across every document type, the playback surfaces, and the video elements themselves. We sit inside the Video Group, alongside the teams building the native engine, the effects platform and the video AI work.

Video is at an interesting point. It's one of the biggest things our community does with Canva, the market has shifted so that almost everything is video now, and we're rebuilding the technical foundations to go after that properly. If you want the scope to change the direction of a product rather than maintain one, this is a good moment to arrive.

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

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.

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