C++ Senior Software Engineer - Cavalry

Canva; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity packages

Inclusive parental leave

Thrive allowance

Flexible leave options

Job summary

Canva’s Cavalry team in London seeks an engineer to deepen integrations with Canva, focusing on performance and reliability across the creative app stack.

You’ll work on authentication, data analytics, and core Cavalry features in C++, collaborating with cross‑product teams to raise quality and consistency in user experiences.

Interviews are conducted virtually. Canva offers equity, parental leave, Thrive allowance and flexible leave to support your wellbeing and growth.

Qualifications

• Deep experience in C++ with emphasis on real-time performance and memory management for a creative application
• Experience with Java to support integration work
• Interest in the intersection of technology and artistry and how tools feel to use
• Comfort with ambiguity and ability to shape problems as they arise
• Breadth across the creative application stack and curiosity about rendering, typography, or related areas

Responsibilities

• Designing and building integrations between Cavalry and Canva to enable cross-product workflows
• Building integrations between Cavalry and Canva pro suite apps like Affinity and defining shared approaches
• Owning and evolving authentication between Cavalry and Canva services
• Building and maintaining application-side data and analytics systems to measure usage and performance
• Contributing to Cavalry core features in the C++ codebase and driving code quality

Skills

C++

Java

Real-time systems

Cross-product integrations

Tools

Affinity

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.

Where and how you can work

The buzzing Canva London campus features several buildings around beautiful leafy Hoxton Square in Shoreditch. While our global headquarters is in Sydney, Australia, London is our HQ for Europe, with all kinds of teams based here, plus event spaces to gather our team and communities. You'll experience a warm welcome from our Vibe team at front of house, amazing home cooked food from our Head Chef and a variety of workspaces to hang out with your team mates or get solo work done. That said, we trust our Canvanauts to choose the balance that empowers them and their team to achieve their goals and so you have choice in where and how you work.

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:

• Designing and building integrations between Cavalry and Canva, enabling workflows and experiences that span these products
• Building integrations between Cavalry and other professional applications in the Canva pro suite, such as Affinity, and helping define shared approaches that can work across products
• Owning and evolving authentication within Cavalry, including how the application connects securely to Canva services and user accounts
• Building and maintaining the application-side systems that support product data and analytics, helping teams understand how Cavalry is being used and how new experiences are performing
• Contributing to Cavalry’s core application when needed, working across the C++ codebase on general product features, improvements, and engineering priorities
• Understanding and improving complex systems, and writing clean code that raises the quality bar for the whole team

You’re probably a match if

• You bring deep experience in C++ and care about what that means for a creative application — real-time performance, memory management, and the craft of systems that artists depend on every day
• You have experience with Java as this will help with integration work
• You're drawn to the intersection of technology and artistry — you think about how tools feel to use, not just how they work
• You're comfortable with ambiguity and enjoy shaping problems as much as solving them
• You bring breadth across the creative application stack — whether your depth is in rendering, text and typography systems, cross-product integrations, or somewhere else, you're curious about the rest
• You write code you're proud of and care about the standards you leave behind for teammates

About the team

Cavalry is a small, experienced team building a best-in-class motion design platform. We're a close-knit group that values craft, honesty, and creative ambition — and we're at an exciting point of growth as part of Canva. You'll work directly on a product that motion designers around the world rely on, with real influence over its direction and quality.

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 & 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 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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