Staff Backend Engineer - Experiments
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 campus is in Sydney. We also have a campus in Melbourne and co-working spaces in Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. But you have choice in where and how you work. That means if you want to do your thing in the office (if you're near one), at home or a bit of both, it's up to you.
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:
- Play a leading role in the technical vision for Pilot, Canva's A/B testing and experimentation platform, setting the direction for how we evolve toward AI-driven product decisions at Canva's scale.
- Build the technical roadmap for AI-driven, self-serve product insights, working closely with PM, PD, Data Science and other teams to make sure the roadmap reflects what teams actually need.
- Shape the architecture and design of the experiments platform to handle Canva's growing scale. Write design docs, run design reviews, and make the big calls on how the system evolves, with a particular focus on improving analysis pipeline reliability and latency.
- Be the technical north star for the team. You'll mentor and guide engineers through complex problems, help set a high bar for how we build, and bring strong customer empathy to everything we ship, because our customers are every product team at Canva.
- Drive cross-team initiatives across Product Platform. Pilot doesn't exist in isolation. You'll work closely with other platform teams, as well as PM, PD, and Data Science, to make sure our systems fit together and raise the bar company-wide.
You're probably a match if
Experience developing distributed web applications on the JVM; experience writing Java (experience with other JVM languages such as Scala, Kotlin, etc is a plus).
- Experience with planning, executing architectural changes, and a creative and conceptual problem-solving approach as opposed to a framework or library focused.
- Deep knowledge of computer science and engineering fundamentals: concurrency, data structures, and distributed systems. An understanding of resiliency techniques and patterns like load balancing, throttling, back pressure, and circuit breaking.
- Experience working in large distributed cloud environments (ideally AWS), experience with cloud native technologies such as Kubernetes and Terraform is a plus.
- Strong communication and teamwork skills, both written and verbal. You're comfortable working across engineering, PM, PD, and Data Science to bring different perspectives together.
- Experience facilitating collaboration and fostering positive working relationships between stakeholders and engineers, promoting a culture of trust, respect, and open communication.
- Experience guiding and mentoring other engineers, helping unblock technical challenges and being an all-around role model.
- A genuine curiosity about how AI can transform experimentation, not just as a feature to ship, but as a way to fundamentally change how teams get to insights. Think AI-assisted experiment design, automated analysis, or reducing the time from experiment end to decision.
- Experience working with large distributed data processing systems (e.g. Snowflake), with strong SQL and data modelling skills. You'll work closely with data scientists, so experience collaborating with DS is essential in this role.
- A foundational understanding of core statistical concepts relevant to experimentation is a plus but not required, such as randomisation, statistical inference, power analysis, and natural variation. You don't need to be a statistician, but if you understand why these things matter it'll help you build systems that produce trustworthy results at scale and collaborate effectively with data scientists.
About the team
The Experiments team is part of PIE (Product Insights Enablement), a group of engineers, data scientists, and product designers building the internal platforms that help Canva move fast and make confident product decisions.
We own Pilot, Canva's A/B testing and experimentation platform. Pilot is the system that lets every product team at Canva design, launch, and measure experiments, from a 1% rollout to a global feature release. When a Canvanaut wants to know whether a new feature is actually working, or which variant of that feature works best, they're relying on us.
On the engineering side, that means owning the full stack: the statistical engine that calculates experiment results, the analysis service that processes millions of metrics, the data pipelines that keep everything fresh, and the UI that makes results legible for data scientists, engineers, product managers, and designers alike.
If you care about getting experimentation right, statistically, operationally, and at scale, this is the place to do it.
About the Role
This is a Staff Software Engineer role on the Experiments team, where you will be responsible for shaping the vision of Experiments at Canva. You'll be one of the most experienced engineers in the room, and the team will look to you to raise the bar technically and help everyone grow.
Customer empathy is at the core of this role. You're building systems that product teams across Canva rely on every day, so keeping their needs front and centre shapes every technical decision you make. Your customers are Canvanauts from all kinds of disciplines; data scientists, engineers, designers, product managers, each with their own way of working but all looking for the same thing: a clear answer on their experiment.
Key technical challenges include making experimentation faster and more cost-efficient to support rapid idea testing, and evolving the platform for the AI era:
Adapting the platform for the AI era, both to enable AI native interactions and enable Canvanauts to iterate at speed ensuring the feedback loop is fast enough to keep pace with teams who are now shipping code at a speed that wasn't possible before.
Improving the reliability of our analysis pipeline. We handle a large volume of data at scale, with a low margin for error, and that bar only gets higher as Canva grows.
Making complex things simple. You'll build experiences that tell teams clearly how their experiment is going and what to do next, while still giving them the depth and detail they need when they want to dig in.
In addition to the technical work, you'll collaborate with Data Scientists, Product Managers, Frontend Engineers, and Designers to determine the platform's future direction. You'll work closely with leads across Product Platform, a supergroup with a mission to enable more informed product decisions at Canva's scale.
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.
