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Canva is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to own and evolve the core API platform infrastructure that enables engineering teams across the organization to communicate reliably and efficiently. This is a technical leadership role focused on building the foundational systems that other teams depend on.
Key Responsibilities:
- Design and build core infrastructure connecting services across Canva's backend engineering organization
- Lead a major migration of how backend services communicate, collaborating with partner engineering teams and leaders
- Drive support for additional languages and frameworks to enable more teams to build natively on the platform
- Own reliability, performance, and correctness of systems in the critical path for the entire engineering organization
- Mentor engineers and raise the technical bar across the team
- Drive technical direction across teams that don't report to you, communicating clearly to both engineers and consuming teams
The role is focused on high-traffic, large-scale infrastructure work similar to API gateways, RPC systems, or service meshes. You'll work on systems where reliability and correctness are paramount, thinking in terms of trade-offs rather than quick fixes. This is platform work designed to make everyone else's job easier by handling the plumbing underneath.
Requirements:
- Proven experience building and operating infrastructure that other engineering teams depend on, ideally in API gateway, RPC, or service mesh space at high traffic and large scale
- Demonstrated comfort owning systems where reliability and correctness are critical
- Ability to drive technical direction across teams without direct authority, with clear communication to both engineers and consuming teams
- Track record of owning large-scale, high-transaction production systems commercially over multiple years
- Experience working in more than one programming language
- Genuine ownership mindset and motivation for platform work that enables others
