Staff Frontend Engineer - Apps API Platform

Summary

Join Canva's Apps API Platform Group as a Staff Frontend Engineer and play a crucial role in developing and refining the Apps SDK. You will design and implement public APIs, improve app runtime performance, work with various languages and environments, and collaborate with internal and external teams. As a technical leader, you'll drive large-scale projects, mentor engineers, and advocate for developer needs. The position requires 8+ years of commercial software development experience, ideally with SDK/API experience, and strong problem-solving and communication skills. Canva offers equity packages, inclusive parental leave, a wellbeing allowance, flexible leave options, and more.

Requirements

• 8+ years of commercial experience in a software development environment, ideally with experience in building internal/external SDKs, APIs, libraries, and frameworks
• You would ideally have worked as a (hands-on) technical lead previously, or Staff/Principal Engineer
• Technical leadership experience on large scale projects, linking up multiple teams at once
• Strong problem-solving skills, with the ability to break large projects down into smaller ones and deliver on them through others
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with a proven ability to work with technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Firmly grounded computer science and engineering fundamentals including asynchronous programming, data structures, solution design, architecture, and design patterns

Responsibilities

• Design and implement public APIs that balance extensibility, usability, and long-term maintainability
• Improve app runtime performance to ensure seamless, high-quality integrations
• Primarily working on web frontend with Typescript, but may need to work with other languages and environments
• Work cross-functionally with core Canva teams to expose internal features via external APIs while maintaining architectural integrity
• Provide technical leadership, mentoring other engineers and driving best practices across the team
• Advocate for developer needs, ensuring that Canva’s SDK and APIs align with the expectations of third-party developers
• Facilitate knowledge sharing and effectively advocate for engineering needs to non-technical stakeholders within the group
• Model initiative and ownership in achieving goals, improving processes and solutions

Preferred Qualifications

• Our frontend stack consists of JavaScript, HTML, CSS, React, TypeScript, MobX. Experience in some of these would be highly valuable
• Understanding of browser rendering pipeline, event handling, WebWorkers, WebGL/WebGPU would be a bonus, but not required
• Passion for performance debugging and benchmarking

Benefits

• 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