Senior Frontend Engineer (Graphics & WebGL) m/f/x - Photo AI

Join the team redefining how the world experiences design.

Hiya, 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 work

Our flagship campus is in Sydney, Australia but Austria is home to part of our European operations. And you have choice in where and how you work, we trust our Canvanauts to choose the balance that empowers them and their team to achieve their goals.

Fun fact, a big part of our Austrian operations is developing the AI product within Canva to help reimagine how artificial intelligence can be used in design. Pretty cool ha!

What you’d be doing in this role

As 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:

• Solving complex performance challenges by optimizing rendering, state management, and user interactions to deliver cutting edge, AI assisted image editing effects and integrate them into Canva’s Photo editing

• Collaborating closely with design and product teams to translate user experience requirements into elegant technical solutions, ensuring the image editing effects feel intuitive and powerful

• Working with cutting-edge web technologies including WebGL for custom rendering and advanced TypeScript patterns for type-safe state management

• Contributing to the broader photo editing ecosystem by building Frontend components that integrate seamlessly within Canva’s photo editor

• Mentoring and collaborating with other engineers on the team, sharing knowledge about complex frontend patterns and helping establish best practices for photo editing UI development

• Driving technical alignment across teams by communicating complex frontend decisions to stakeholders, contributing to architectural discussions, and ensuring Photo AI initiatives integrate smoothly with Canva's broader platform.

You're probably a match if

• You bring strong commercial experience in building complex frontend applications using modern JavaScript/TypeScript and React, working across technologies like MobX, WebGL, WebGPU, WebAssembly, and web workers.

• You have experience with image and media technologies, including canvas/WebGL rendering, and other creative tools or applications.

• You deeply understand performance optimisation, including rendering performance, memory management, and techniques for real-time user interactions.

• You’ve worked with complex UI state management systems, including undo/redo functionality, real-time updates, and maintaining consistency across multiple views and components.

• You demonstrate solid computer science fundamentals — from data structures and algorithms to scalable and maintainable software architecture patterns.

• You collaborate effectively with designers, product managers, and engineers, and communicate clearly to help deliver cohesive, impactful user experiences.

About the team

We are Photo AI. We push the boundaries of what is possible in Photo Editing and make a lasting impact on our users' creative journeys. Our mission is to position Canva as a leader in Visual AI by consistently delivering cutting-edge, AI based features that enhance the Photo Editing experience. Our spirit is to set realistic, but crazy-big goals where we dive into the unknown and make new things happen – which is a collaborative effort from all the people in the team. We believe in the power of innovation and high-quality delivery, which is made possible through our ability to focus on what is more impactful for our users and through our ability to invent novel solutions to hard image processing and understanding problems.

As a Senior Frontend Engineer you will lead the inception, scoping and building of cutting edge photo editing effects. You will work in a cross-functional team with Backend and Machine Learning engineers plus a Product manager and Product Designer. Your team owns a piece of the photo and image editing experience end-to-end in Canva. You will implement performant Frontend components and capabilities used by millions of users every month.

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.

At Canva we value fairness, and we strive to provide competitive, market-informed compensation whilst ensuring internal equity within the team in each region. We make hiring decisions based on your skills, experience and our overall assessment of what we observed and learnt in the hiring process. The starting salary for this position is EUR 80,000. When calculating offers, we make salary decisions based on market data and candidates' skills and experience.

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.