Senior Frontend Engineer - Editing APIs

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, Adelaide, and Auckland in New Zealand. 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

About the Team

The Editing API team is on a mission to unlock the power of the Canva Editor for both internal and external developers. By providing well-documented, well-supported, and robust APIs and frameworks, we enable developers and AI agents to extend, enhance, and innovate on Canva’s core editing functionality.

At Canva, the Editor is at the heart of our mission to empower the world to design anything. With hundreds of developers contributing to its evolution, our team plays a crucial role in accelerating development speed and expanding the Editor’s capabilities through safer, more powerful APIs.

As a platform-focused team, we work closely with more than ten other teams that both consume and contribute to our APIs and frameworks. Established in 2024, we’ve grown into a small but quickly growing team of engineers and technical leadership.

About the Role

We’re looking for mid to senior-level engineers to join the Editing API team, a group dedicated to enabling developers to extend and enhance the Canva Editor through powerful, well-supported APIs and frameworks.

If you’re passionate about building high-quality APIs that accelerate development in large engineering organizations - or excited to learn - this is the perfect opportunity. You’ll help shape our approach to API design, ensuring we create intuitive, scalable, and robust solutions that empower both internal and external developers.

As we crystallize our API and framework roadmaps, you’ll be jumping into a highly engaged, collaborative, and clever team - driving projects that have significant impact across Canva. At the same time, there’s still plenty to figure out, so you’ll play a key role in understanding the needs of our API clients and guiding the future direction of our team’s mission.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Hands on software development  – Design, develop, and deploy solutions, working closely with leads, designers, and product managers to deliver impactful features and experiments to millions of users.  You will build and maintain scalable, high-quality APIs and frameworks that empower internal and external developers.

• Knowledge sharing and advocacy – Communicate engineering needs effectively to non-technical team members within the group, fostering collaboration and technical excellence.

• Ownership and initiative – Take charge of achieving goals, improving processes, and refining solutions to drive continuous improvement.

• Cross-team collaboration – Identify opportunities to work across teams, leveraging new insights and improvements that align with our mission.

What We’re Looking For

• Experience with TypeScript, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, React, and MobX – Our frontend stack relies on these technologies, and familiarity with them will set you up for success.

• Software development experience in API/SDK design – Ideally, you have experience building internal or external APIs or SDKs that enhance developer velocity.

• Strong computer science and engineering fundamentals – Including asynchronous programming, data structures, solution design, architecture, and design patterns.

• Performance debugging and benchmarking passion – Enthusiasm for optimizing performance and debugging issues.

• Understanding of browser internals – Knowledge of browser rendering pipelines, event handling, WebWorkers, and WebGL/WebGPU is a plus.

• Collaborative mindset – Proven experience working effectively within a team and communicating technical ideas clearly.

• Problem-solving skills – Ability to break down complex projects into manageable pieces and deliver them efficiently.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills – Effectively convey ideas and collaborate across technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Not sure if you meet all the requirements? We’d still love to hear from you! At Canva, we know that great engineers come from a variety of backgrounds, and we value passion, curiosity, and a willingness to learn just as much as specific experience. If you're excited about this role but don’t tick every box, we encourage you to apply, you might a great fit in ways you didn’t expect!

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 due to our remote-friendly culture and distributed workforce, interviews are conducted virtually.