SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Canva is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to own the backend infrastructure powering AI editing features across the platform. You'll design and operate a Java-based service that orchestrates GPU-backed AI models, transforming user requests (e.g., "remove this background") into reliable, observable, durable jobs.
Key responsibilities include:
- Architect and own the backend service layer between Canva's product surfaces and GPU model workers, handling API/proto design, job state machines, multi-step pipelines, queue-driven orchestration, persistence, content safety, and error handling.
- Ship new AI editing capabilities end-to-end: design APIs, build pipelines, wire async handoffs to GPU workers, and roll out behind feature flags with metrics.
- Operate the service in production at Canva scale, managing autoscaling, GPU capacity planning, health probes, region rollouts, and deployment strategies.
- Optimize for latency and cost across the entire request path (queue wait, media fetch, pre/post-processing, GPU time, moderation, S3 upload).
- Build platform APIs that other internal services and product surfaces rely on, ensuring backwards compatibility and sensible defaults as models evolve.
- Act as backend tech lead for the team, shaping architecture alongside the ML tech lead and raising backend engineering standards.
- Partner across product, research, inference, and consumer teams to deliver new capabilities.
You'll need significant commercial experience designing and operating backend systems in production, high proficiency in Java (or Kotlin/Scala), strong CS fundamentals (concurrency, distributed systems, performance engineering), and hands-on experience with asynchronous job-based systems. You should be comfortable with operational ownership (metrics, dashboards, autoscaling, deployment config, progressive rollout), API design discipline, and working alongside ML engineers. Experience leading technical initiatives end-to-end and clear communication across technical and non-technical audiences is essential. Python familiarity is a plus; deep ML expertise is not required.
The Transforms team sits within AI Media's Generative Foundations group, focused on world-class AI editing as a platform capability. Canva's flagship campus is in Sydney, but Austria hosts part of European operations. You have flexibility in where and how you work.
