Staff Frontend Engineer - Photo Editing

Google Chrome Microsoft Edge Apple Safari Mozilla Firefox Staff Frontend Engineer - Photo EditingFull-timeRecruitment type: PermanentJob DescriptionJoin the team redefining how the world experiences design.Hey, 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 workOur flagship Sydney campus is uniquely Canva - an extension of our Surry Hills neighbourhood. It’s a thoughtfully designed space with plenty of room to collaborate, focus, and connect. This role is based in Sydney, and we’re looking for someone who calls it home. Our hybrid way of working gives you the flexibility to work remotely and to come together on campus for meaningful in-person collaboration and connection when it matters most. We trust our Canvanauts to choose the balance that empowers them and their team to achieve their goals.What you'd be doing in this roleAs 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.At the moment, this role is focused on:Setting the technical direction for frontend architecture across the Photo group and partnering teams.Framing and leading complex cross-team frontend initiatives, balancing technical excellence with product outcomes.Raising the engineering bar through architecture, performance improvements, mentoring, and technical standards.Identifying strategic technical opportunities and risks that shape Canva's long-term product direction.Collaborating closely with senior engineers, machine learning engineers, product managers, and designers to deliver ambitious user experiences.Representing the Photo group in cross-group architecture discussions and influencing the evolution of Canva's frontend platform.Contributing hands-on to critical technical projects while enabling other engineers to do their best work.You're probably a match ifYou have extensive commercial experience building and scaling complex frontend applications using modern JavaScript or TypeScript and React.You have successfully led multi-team technical initiatives from ambiguous problem definition through to successful delivery.You bring deep expertise in areas such as rendering performance, large-scale frontend architecture, complex state management, or platform engineering.You demonstrate exceptional technical judgement and communicate complex technical decisions clearly across engineering and non-engineering audiences.You have a proven track record of mentoring senior engineers and raising engineering standards across teams.You're comfortable operating in ambiguity and turning strategic goals into practical technical execution.Nice to haveExperience with WebGL, WebGPU, WebAssembly, Canvas rendering, or graphics-intensive applications.Experience building image editing, creative tooling, or media platforms.Experience integrating AI or machine learning capabilities into product experiences.Contributions to frontend platforms, design systems, or shared engineering infrastructure.About the teamWe're Photo. Our mission is to make Canva's Photo Editor the place where anyone can transform images into stunning visual outcomes effortlessly and at any scale. We're building the workspace where images live, get edited, and get reused across designs.We set ambitious goals, embrace difficult technical challenges, and believe innovation happens when talented people work together to solve meaningful problems. Our team combines cutting-edge frontend engineering with AI-powered image understanding and processing to help millions of people create beautiful designs every day.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,...