Engineering Manager (FE) - Ecosystem - App APIs

About the Group/Team

The Ecosystem group contributes to Canva’s growth towards 1 billion users by creating an abundant app ecosystem that tailors to the diverse needs of our users across all demographics. The role will lead a team that will build out our new Apps API capabilities.

We aim to build the world’s richest Ecosystem of apps and integrations for visual design and communications that supercharge Canva’s ability to meet the diverse needs of a billion users and drive Canva’s MAU growth.

Our Apps platform launched in June 2023 with the vision of enabling App developer to expand core design capabilities with the most innovative and useful apps. It has since rapidly grown to over 400 apps used 2 Billion times in 2024 with a diverse range innovative generative AI apps, design utilities and integrations to popular SaaS products.

This team build API capabilities for the apps platform expose core product features to thousands of app developers.

About the Role/Specialty

The Apps API team are around between 6-8 engineers focusing on a variety of APIs including Design Interaction, Data Connectors, User, and many more.

As the team lead, you will be responsible for driving the product direction, providing technical guidance to the team, growing engineers, and collaborating with cross-functional leaders on roadmap goals and milestones. You will also be working closely with external partners to ensure consistency across Canvas public API surface areas.

A unique opportunity in this role is that the customers are developers, which means Canva engineers can bring insights into our product roadmap.

What you’ll do (responsibilities):

• You will lead and coach a team of 6-8 engineers focused on building the Apps API capabilities
• You will be accountable for team delivery and ongoing delivery improvements.
• You will partner with Product to shape our roadmap, balancing product outcomes with pragmatic technical excellence.
• You will contribute to the technical strategy by representing one of three Apps platform teams in the larger Ecosystem group
• You will seek exciting opportunities to improve the general experience of building apps using our developer platform.
• You will be a hands-on leader contributing directly to progressing goals with code.

What we're looking for:

• You are a technical and people leader - having led high-performing teams where everyone can share their best ideas and be their best selves.
• You are an experienced front-end engineer who brings experience JavaScript, TypeScript, React, the HTML DOM, and cross-browser knowledge
• You understand the product life cycle, features, technical debt, QA, and supporting quality at speed. 
• You will know when you need to push back, shielding the team from disruptions. You will provide a safe environment that helps to bring clarity.
• You will be more than happy to work in our environment - our core stack is React/Typescript frontend, with a Microservices Java backend.
• You will have found the love and passion for coaching people and developing a culture that enables teams to be their best.
• You will have the ability to work with a diverse range of individuals from different backgrounds and with different professional and personal needs.
• Your excellent written and verbal communication skills will enable you to manage stakeholders and communicate effectively across other groups.
• You will be leading by example - promoting Canva’s values, no-blame mentality, and inclusive culture

What will you learn and how will you develop at Canva:

• Through a culture of continuous feedback, you will grow along the 4 Canva pillars: Craft, Communication, Strategy and Leadership.
• You will work with your coach to define personal growth goals that will allow you to make an impact and contribute to Canva’s success consistently.