Senior Backend Engineer - Java - Product Platform (remote Across Anz)

Canva Canva · Enterprise · Brisbane, QLD, Australia · Information Technology

Senior Backend Engineer role focused on building and evolving core backend frameworks, shared services, and developer APIs to accelerate product development and enable teams to ship consistent, fast, and reliable experiences at global scale. The role involves designing and delivering scalable systems, partnering with product teams, contributing to service patterns and tooling, and mentoring engineers. Experience with Java, cloud environments, API design, and distributed systems is required.

What you'd actually do

  1. Build and evolve core backend frameworks, shared services, and developer APIs that accelerate product development.
  2. Design and deliver scalable systems that are easy to use, maintain, and extend.
  3. Partner with product teams to co-design abstractions that make feature delivery faster and safer.
  4. Contribute to service patterns, conventions, and tooling that raise engineering standards across Canva.
  5. Collaborate across Platform and Product teams to improve observability, rollout processes, and developer workflows.

Skills

Required

  • 6+ years of experience building scalable backend systems in modern cloud environments
  • Proficiency in Java or other JVM-based languages (Kotlin, Scala, etc.)
  • Strong understanding of API design, modular architecture, and developer experience principles
  • Experience with service frameworks, deployment pipelines, and shared libraries
  • Familiarity with cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred)
  • Excellent collaboration and communication skills; you thrive in cross-functional teams
  • Strong grasp of data structures and algorithms, with an ability to reason about complexity and scalability in distributed systems