Staff Software Engineer - Video Platform

Xapply; Sydney; Hybrid; AUD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity packages

Annual Vibe & Thrive allowance

Flexible leave options

Job summary

Canva is hiring for a backend software engineer focused on scalable C++ services for our audio and video platform. You will design and operate distributed systems handling ingestion, transcoding, storage, and delivery of multimedia content at global scale.

Collaborate with product and design teams to create excellent video editing and playback experiences for millions of users. The role emphasizes performance optimization, reliability, and cost efficiency within a hybrid Sydney-based setup, with

Qualifications

• Strong background building scalable, secure backend systems using C++.
• Solid CS fundamentals: concurrency, memory management, data structures.
• Experience designing/operating distributed systems and cloud production.
• Hands-on with cloud platforms/services in production environments.
• Excellent communication and collaboration across engineering, product, design teams.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain high-performance C++ services, frameworks, and tools powering Canva's video platform.
• Design and implement distributed systems for multimedia ingestion, processing, storage, and delivery at global scale.
• Collaborate with engineers, product managers, and designers to enable video editing and playback experiences.
• Optimize multimedia processing pipelines for reliability, performance, scalability and cost efficiency.
• Build new platform capabilities to support Canva's growing video ecosystem.
• Drive engineering excellence via testing, code reviews, and operational best practices.
• Troubleshoot complex production challenges and contribute to long-term evolution of video infrastructure.

Skills

C++

Backend systems

Distributed systems

Cloud platforms

Performance debugging

Communication

Tools

FFmpeg

GStreamer

H.264/AVC

H.265/HEVC

VP9

AV1

Job description

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 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 this will likely evolve.

At the moment, this role is focused on:

• Develop and maintain high-performance C++ services, frameworks, and tools that power Canva's audio and video processing platform.
• Design and implement distributed systems that efficiently ingest, process, store, and deliver multimedia content to millions of users globally.
• Collaborate closely with engineers, product managers, and designers to enable exceptional video editing and playback experiences across Canva.
• Optimise multimedia processing pipelines for reliability, performance, scalability, and cost efficiency.
• Build new platform capabilities that support Canva's rapidly growing video and multimedia ecosystem.
• Drive engineering excellence through testing, code reviews, operational best practices, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Troubleshoot complex production challenges and contribute to the long-term evolution of Canva's video infrastructure.

You're probably a match if

• You have strong commercial experience building highly scalable, secure, and performant backend systems using C++.
• You're deeply grounded in computer science and software engineering fundamentals, including concurrency, multithreading, memory management, data structures, architecture, and design patterns.
• You have experience designing and operating distributed systems and scalable backend architectures.
• You have hands-on experience working with cloud platforms and services in production environments.
• You are highly skilled at diagnosing, debugging, and resolving complex performance and reliability issues.
• You have excellent communication and collaboration skills and enjoy working across engineering, product, and design teams.
• You are passionate about audio and video technologies and excited by the challenge of processing multimedia content at a massive scale.
• You have experience with modern video codecs such as H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, VP9, or AV1.
• You have deep experience with multimedia frameworks and libraries such as FFmpeg and/or GStreamer, including source-level debugging, architecture analysis, performance profiling, and custom patch development.
• You have built large-scale video ingestion, storage, transcoding, processing, and delivery systems.
• You have a strong understanding of multimedia containers and formats such as MP4 and WebM.

Nice to have:

• Contributions to FFmpeg, GStreamer, or other open-source multimedia projects.
• Experience optimising video playback through adaptive bitrate streaming technologies such as DASH, HLS, or CMAF.
• Experience tuning encoding pipelines to improve video quality, storage efficiency, and delivery performance.
• Experience working with Java-based services in large-scale distributed environments.

About the team

The Audio & Video Platform team sits within Canva's Media Product Platform group. Our mission is to build an efficient, scalable, cost-effective, and reliable video hosting and delivery platform without compromising video quality. We create the services, frameworks, and tools that power video ingestion, transcoding, storage, processing, and delivery across Canva. Our work enables product teams to build world-class video editing and playback experiences, helping millions of users bring their ideas to life through visual communication every day.

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 — 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.