Senior Machine Learning Engineer - AI Effects and Editing

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 an MLE on the Video Effects stream, you’ll design, fine-tune, and deploy models that power Canva’s next-generation video effects, AI editing and interactive experiences. From integrating on-device AI capabilities to building scalable backend pipelines, you’ll bridge research and production — transforming ML ideas into delightful, real-time features for our users.

What you’ll do (responsibilities)

• Design, fine-tune, and deploy ML models for AI-powered visual effects across image and video modalities.
• Build robust pipelines for LoRA-based model training, post-training quantization, and inference optimisation.
• Develop and integrate on-device ML capabilities (MediaPipe, CoreML, NNAPI, etc.) for mobile runtime efficiency.
• Scale backend services for effect model serving, asset management, and real-time rendering.
• Prototype novel AI effects using diffusion, computer vision, and shader-driven approaches.
• Work closely with design and engineering to bring creative ideas to life as user-facing features.
• Stay informed on emerging trends in generative ML, real-time graphics, and VFX workflows to drive innovation.

Qualifications

What we're looking for

We’re looking for an MLE with both technical depth and creative instinct — someone who thrives in fast-moving, cross-disciplinary environments. You’ll bring:

• Academic or practical background in computer graphics, computer vision, or computer animation — with experience in one or more of: numerical methods, geometric processing, physical simulation, character animation, generative models (GAN, VAE), or mobile image processing.
• Proven experience fine-tuning and deploying computer vision models, particularly for real-time or streaming use cases.
• Hands-on skills with LoRA training, model post-processing (quantization, pruning), and on-device inference optimisation.
• Familiarity with image and video ML models and how they integrate into visual or rendering pipelines.
• Proficiency in backend development (e.g., Python, Go) and model-serving architectures.
• Practical knowledge of computer graphics APIs (OpenGL/OpenGLES) and shader development (GLSL/HLSL).
• Experience with AI effect tools, video post-production, or multimedia ML use cases is a strong bonus.
• A mindset that balances research curiosity with rapid product iteration.
• Full proficiency in English communications.

Additional Information

What you will learn and develop at Canva

• Learn to ship creative ML features at scale, powering real-time video editing for millions
• Contribute to an interdisciplinary team bridging product, AI/ML, and design
• Influence Canva’s future in intelligent creative tools through your research and engineering