Senior Backend Engineer - Video Effects
Job Description
- Multimedia or video infrastructure experience
- Build scalable backend services that support the effect creation and serving layer
- Design and maintain APIs for effect asset storage, retrieval, and metadata management
- Develop effect management tooling to support internal creators and product workflows
- Optimize system performance, reliability, and memory efficiency
- Collaborate across specialties to integrate services into Canva’s broader infrastructure
- Support the global distribution of effects with caching, delivery strategies, and observability
- Ensure systems are production-ready, fault-tolerant, and easy to maintain
- Experience building and operating distributed systems or microservices at scale
- Strong programming skills in C++, Java, Go, or Python
- Solid understanding of backend architecture, caching, and performance tuning
- Familiarity with large-scale infrastructure and deployment systems
- A collaborative, product-minded approach to engineering
- Operate at scale—building infra used by millions globally
- Work on emerging product areas that blend creative tooling and ML-powered experiences
- Build expertise in performance, effect delivery, and distributed systems
- Grow within a supportive, high-impact backend infrastructure team
Company Description
About the Group/Team
We're the Video team within the Design Experience Supergroup, and we’re on a mission to empower every user to tell compelling visual stories through video. We build intuitive, powerful tools and rendering infrastructure that help users go from idea to impact—seamlessly. Together, we’re shaping the future of multimedia creation, and this role will be core to enabling innovation across Canva’s intelligent video editing experiences.
Job Description
About the Role/Specialty
As a Backend Engineer in the Video Effects team, you'll build robust, scalable backend services to power our intelligent effects pipeline. While some multimedia exposure is helpful, this is a generalist backend role focused on building high-performance systems. You’ll work across effect asset management, backend tools, and content distribution services. Your work will directly enable creators to unlock a new generation of AI-powered design tools.
What you’ll do (responsibilities)
- Build scalable backend services that support the effect creation and serving layer
- Design and maintain APIs for effect asset storage, retrieval, and metadata management
- Develop effect management tooling to support internal creators and product workflows
- Optimize system performance, reliability, and memory efficiency
- Collaborate across specialties to integrate services into Canva’s broader infrastructure
- Support the global distribution of effects with caching, delivery strategies, and observability
- Ensure systems are production-ready, fault-tolerant, and easy to maintain
Qualifications
What we're looking for
We’re looking for a backend engineer with a passion for multimedia systems and deep expertise in performance-focused engineering. You’ll bring:
- Experience building and operating distributed systems or microservices at scale
- Strong programming skills in C++, Java, Go, or Python
- Solid understanding of backend architecture, caching, and performance tuning
- Familiarity with large-scale infrastructure and deployment systems
- Multimedia or video infrastructure experience is a bonus
- A collaborative, product-minded approach to engineering
Additional Information
What you will learn and develop at Canva
- Operate at scale—building infra used by millions globally
- Work on emerging product areas that blend creative tooling and ML-powered experiences
- Build expertise in performance, effect delivery, and distributed systems
- Grow within a supportive, high-impact backend infrastructure team
