Engineering Manager (BE) - Content Growth

Hey, hello, hiya, g'day, mabuhay, kia ora, 你好, hallo, vítejte!

Thanks for stopping by. We know job hunting can be a little time consuming and you're probably keen to find out what's on offer, so we'll get straight to the point.

Where and how you can work

Our flagship campus is in Sydney. We also have a campus in Melbourne and co-working spaces in Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. But you have choice in where and how you work. That means if you want to do your thing in the office (if you're near one), at home or a bit of both, it's up to you.

What you’d be doing in this role

As Canva scales change continues to be part of our DNA. But we like to think that's all part of the fun. So this will give you the flavour of the type of things you'll be working on when you start, but this will likely evolve.

About the Team
The Content Growth team is on a mission to build a rewarding experience for content producers, enabling them to bring the best content that inspires the world to design. Our vision is to create the most effective content creation ecosystem, building the world’s most valuable, comprehensive, and truly local content library.

As part of this team, you will lead engineers working across backend services and frontend pages to develop scalable and engaging experiences for content creators, helping them discover, contribute, and manage content seamlessly.

What You’ll Do:

• Lead and support a high-performing engineering team, fostering a culture of ownership, collaboration, and technical excellence.
• Drive the development of intuitive, high-quality frontend experiences that enhance the content producer journey, ensuring accessibility, usability, and engagement.
• Design and oversee scalable backend solutions that track content usage effectively and power incentive systems aligned with the broader content strategy
• Collaborate closely with product, design, and data teams to define and deliver impactful features that align with business and user needs.
• Set clear technical direction and goals, balancing short-term product needs with long-term platform health and scalability.
• Mentor and coach engineers, providing regular feedback, supporting career growth, and enabling high performance.
• Ensure best practices in engineering, including code quality, testing, performance optimization, security, and operational excellence—focusing on reliability, monitoring, and conducting regular operational reviews.

Must-Have:

• Strong leadership and coaching skills, with the ability to engage and motivate a diverse team of engineers.
• Proven experience leading engineering teams, fostering collaboration, and driving high performance.
• Experience in building scalable, high-performance web applications using Java
• Strong understanding of modern front-end frameworks, UI/UX principles, and accessibility best practices.
• Experience in backend development (Java) using cloud services (AWS, GCP, or equivalent) , and it would be nice to have experience in big data infrastructure concepts like ELT (dbt), data aggregation (tinybird), and olap data warehousing (snowflake)
• Strong problem-solving and debugging skills, with a solid understanding of software design patterns, architecture, and best practices.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to navigate trade-offs and influence stakeholders across different disciplines.

Nice-to-Have

• Experience with content management systems, creator platforms, or marketplace ecosystems.
• Background in growth engineering, experimentation, or user engagement strategies.
• Familiarity with data-driven decision-making, A/B testing, and analytics tools.
• Prior experience working in a fast-paced SaaS environment.

Why Join Canva?

As a Team Engineering Lead at Canva, you’ll play a critical role in shaping the future of content creation by empowering creators worldwide. You’ll be part of a dynamic, fast-growing environment where innovation, collaboration, and impact drive everything we do.

If you're passionate about leading teams, building world-class frontend experiences, and making a meaningful impact to thousands of content creators, we’d love to hear from you!

What's in it for you?

Achieving our crazy big goals motivates us to work hard - and we do - but you'll experience lots of moments of magic, connectivity and fun woven throughout life at Canva, too. We also offer a stack 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

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

Please note that interviews are conducted virtually.