Staff Frontend Engineer

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, and work cross-functionally with internal teams and external developers. As a technical leader, you'll drive large-scale projects, mentor other engineers, and advocate for developer needs. The role offers flexibility in work location and a comprehensive benefits package. Canva is committed to creating a world-class app experience and fostering a supportive and inclusive work environment. The position requires 8+ years of commercial software development experience and strong technical leadership skills. Canva offers a competitive compensation and benefits package, including equity, inclusive parental leave, and a wellbeing allowance.

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