Senior Backend Engineer - Video Effects (China)

Company Description

About the Group/Team

The Multimedia team is on a mission to make multimedia storytelling quick, simple, and fun for everyone. Within the Design Experience Supergroup, we focus on delivering powerful video creation tools and intuitive user experiences. We combine backend services, real-time media processing, and AI innovation to help our users bring ideas to life.

Job Description

About the Role/Specialty

This role sits within the Video Effects stream and is focused on building high-throughput backend infrastructure for real-time video processing. You’ll design and scale distributed systems that serve ML models, manage GPU workloads, and deliver seamless video experiences. Your work will underpin the performance, reliability, and responsiveness of Canva’s most cutting-edge multimedia features.

What you’ll do (responsibilities)

• Design and maintain scalable distributed systems for audio/video processing
• Build robust APIs and services to integrate ML models into real-time video features
• Optimise backend infrastructure for performance, reliability, and memory efficiency
• Develop caching and content delivery strategies for ML-generated media
• Manage and tune GPU clusters for efficient model serving and video transformation
• Ensure fault-tolerance and scalability across containerized media pipelines
• Collaborate closely with MLEs, product managers, and researchers to ship end-to-end solutions
• Work with global teams to build integrated systems with global Canva infrastructure

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 scalable distributed systems and microservices
• Deep knowledge of high-throughput AV processing infrastructure
• Familiarity with GPU orchestration, resource scheduling, and model-serving pipelines
• Strong system design skills, particularly for real-time content delivery and ML integration
• Proficiency in cloud infrastructure, containerization, and deployment at scale
• A product-driven mindset with a strong focus on reliability, performance, and user impact

Additional Information

What the candidate will learn and how will they develop at Canva

• Operate at scale, shipping infrastructure that supports millions of video creators
• Develop advanced expertise in GPU workloads, ML model integration, and AV system design
• Collaborate across specialties in a fast-paced, research-meets-product environment
• Influence Canva’s next generation of intelligent, cloud-native video creation tools