Backend Engineer - Affinity

Affinity apps have quickly become some of the most well respected professional creative apps available, winning multiple awards including an Apple Design Award and App of the Year, as well as thousands of 5-star customer reviews from around the world.

The Affinity Web Team is responsible for the primary sales channel for these apps. We sell to millions of customers worldwide, supporting different locales whilst ensuring a high standard of accessibility and user experience (UX) helping to ensure everyone can access our industry leading graphic design software.

Our mission is to continue to evolve our platform to become more secure, robust and scaleable to meet the increasing demand for Affinity software as well as working on new integrations touching many other departments such as Help & Support, Cloud Services and Marketing.

After becoming part of the Canva family, we’re now entering an exciting era of expansion and collaboration, requiring a new take on our current line up of services.

About the Role/Specialty
We’re a small team, but we make a big impact! To do this, we have each other’s back, and foster a supportive and encouraging environment to help us reach our goals.

Our store is the bulk of our work, but you’ll also be working on integrations into CRM’s, MoR’s (Merchant of Record) and various marketing platforms all of which have a high impact for the departments that own them.

We’re rapidly moving functionality into the cloud in the form of serverless technology which is an exciting area of exploration for us, and you’ll get to be a part of this too.

Where and how you’ll work

Canva’s flagship campus is in Sydney, Australia, supported by offices all over the world from London to Manilla, San Fransisco to Vienna and everywhere in between. But our super-modern Nottingham campus is home to Affinity.

Located near the bustling town of West Bridgford only a short distance away from Nottingham’s legendary city centre, the interior of our office is a stunning, newly renovated, open-plan working environment featuring various meeting and breakout spaces. Our state-of-the-art atrium and bar area plays host to a range of special events, and on regular workdays, you’ll almost always find someone recharging at the pool table or trying to beat the high score on one of the arcade games in our café. It’s an incredibly welcoming, friendly working environment where you can enjoy collaborating with others, or simply find somewhere to focus on independent work.

While there’s ample on-site parking and super easy public transportation options nearby, you’ll have a choice in where and how you work. We trust our team to choose a balance of office and remote working that empowers them to get their best work done.!

What you’ll do (responsibilities)

As a Back End Software Engineer you will be working closely with Dev Ops, Front End and other Back End Software Engineers, as well as stakeholders in both Affinity and Canva.

• Maintenance and development of new and existing websites and micro services using a mixture of technologies and related tools such as PHP, TypeScript, MySQL, DynamoDB and Redis.
• Responsible for secure, readable, tested and well documented code
• Work as part of a busy team in a dynamic and highly creative environment liaising with various stake holders across Affinity and Canva
• Taking pride in your work, working to solve problems and communicate solutions across the teams to both technical and non-technically minded people.
• Taking ownership of the projects you work on, from scoping and design all the way through to launch, support and continual maintenance/improvements.
• Participate in team, and business wide meetings to help arrive at solutions.
• Find opportunities to improve existing workflows and implement new ones.

What we're looking for

• If you’ve got solid experience, ideally 3+ years (post degree or equivalent), with a modern MVC framework in PHP and or TypeScript along with a good grasp of OOP and software architectural design principles then we’re off to a good start!
• Additionally, if you’ve got some experience with serverless technology such as AWS Lambda that will really help you stand out.
• You should be a forward thinker and be able to balance engineering against business objectives.
• You will know where to make optimisations in database design and code for best performance.
• Ideally, you would also have a solid grasp on Front End technology such as reactive components and state management.

What’s in it for you

Achieving our ambitious goals motivates us to work hard – and we do – but you'll experience lots of moments of magic, connectivity and fun woven throughout life within Affinity and the rest of the Canva group, too. We also offer a range 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
• Free communal lunches every week to bring together meeting of minds over a plate of delicious food

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 Affinity, our culture and the culture of our parent company and group, Canva.

When you apply, please tell us the pronouns you use and any reasonable adjustments you may need during the interview process.

We celebrate all types of skills and backgrounds at Affinity and Canva, so even if you don’t feel like your skills quite match what’s listed above, we still want to hear from you!

About Canva

At Canva, we create tools that empower the world to design. Our mission is to democratise design and empower creativity for anyone and everyone, on every platform! Inspired by a team of talented thinkers, an amazing culture and remarkable growth trajectory, we’re out to change the world – one design at a time.

Since launch in August 2013 we have grown exponentially, amassing over 190 million monthly active users across 190 different countries who have created more than four billion designs. We are one of the world’s fastest-growing technology companies and have only achieved about one percent of what we hope to do!