Staff Software Engineer

At the moment, this role is focused on:

This role will be part of the technical leaders of the Discovery Platform (DP) Group. As such, you will be working on a variety of challenges within the Search domain. And while you are part of a specific team, you will also be leaned on by other teams in the group for your Search expertise.

• You will be one of the stewards of the Search Pipeline and shared query technologies such as caches, feature store, and interleaving.
• You will scale out our backend systems which includes Opensearch and Elasticsearch
• You will build and maintain new APIs to support Public and Private Search
• You will build and maintain platform capabilities, such as Vector Search, that support internal teams
• You will build and maintain our own experimentation tool
• You will contribute to a culture of high collaboration and communication
• You will contribute to a strong culture of operational excellence where the team is proactively improving the performance of critical services it owns
• You will be a part of a fun and rewarding environment of learning and celebration

You're probably a match if

• You have a deep understanding of information retrieval and search technologies, you are passionate of the Search domain and keep track of innovations in this space
• You have practical experience in Search and worked with related technologies such as Opensearch and Elasticsearch
• You have commercial experience developing sophisticated web applications
• Most of our code is in Java, so ideally you will be comfortable using Java
• Firmly grounded computer science and engineering fundamentals including concurrency, multithreading, data structures, solution design, architecture, and design patterns
• Working collaboratively with team members and communicating effectively
• Good writing and verbal communication skills
• Previous on-call experience

About the team

Almost 100% of our users will interact with the Discovery Group of Groups (GoG) features every time they come to Canva. We are responsible for the Infrastructure, Machine Learning, and User Experience that powers many parts of Canva’s core product experience.

Our work is the key discovery mechanism to promote and expose Canva’s content to current and potential users. Without good discovery, users will never know we even have content!

Some of the key capabilities we own/contribute include:

• Running and deploying our core search and recommender indexes and services
• Improving our ML rankers across search and recommendations
• Integrating AI technologies into our ranking and content understanding capabilities
• Building the amazing search and recommendations experience in the editor and marketplace
• Building the private search experience.

The Discovery Platform Group owns all the nuts and bolts of scaling and orchestrating systems to the eye-watering levels that Canva achieves. All the while adding new groundbreaking features, and taking on technical challenges never faced at Canva. This help ensures Canva remains at the forefront of innovation in this dynamic landscape.

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 range 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.

We celebrate all types of skills and backgrounds at Canva so even if you don’t feel like your skills quite match what’s listed above - we still want to hear from you!

Please note that interviews are conducted virtually.