Engineering Manager

Company Description

Join the team redefining how the world experiences design.

Hey, 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. We also have a campus in Melbourne and co-working spaces in Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. But 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.

Job Description

What you’d be doing in this role

At Canva, change is part of our DNA. The exact shape of this role will evolve over time, but to begin with you’ll focus on:

- Coaching and supporting a team of frontend engineers, helping them grow their careers, stay motivated, and deliver impactful work.

- Leading the team that builds the developer-facing tools, starter kits, and documentation that power the Canva Ecosystem and integrations.

- Driving the creation of beautiful, intuitive, and high-quality developer experiences — from CLIs and toolbars to rich documentation and starter projects.

- Ensuring all public-facing code and docs are of exceptional quality, setting a high bar for design, accessibility, performance, and maintainability.

- Acting as a champion for developer empathy, deeply understanding the workflows of external developers and building tools that are delightful, fast, and easy to use.

- Collaborating closely with PMs, designers, and other engineers across DX and Ecosystem to shape strategy and deliver on big-picture goals.

- Driving planning, refinement, and delivery of seasonal goals while ensuring alignment with broader group priorities.

- Leading by example: contributing to code, reviewing public PRs, and shaping the tone and voice of our developer documentation.

- Creating a team culture that values openness, quality, and developer happiness — where engineers do the best work of their careers.

You're probably a match if

- You have experience leading frontend engineering teams and guiding them through goals and strategy aligned to a larger vision.

- You bring strong technical depth in modern frontend development, with the ability to set and uphold high standards for code that is open-source and widely used.

- You’re passionate about developer experience and have empathy for external developers, shaping tools that make complex workflows simple and enjoyable.

- You balance technical trade-offs pragmatically — knowing when to push for polish and when to move quickly — while maintaining long‑term maintainability.

- You’re an excellent communicator who can collaborate across disciplines and represent your team’s work to both technical and non‑technical audiences.

- You inspire, coach, and grow engineers, helping them reach their full potential while fostering psychological safety and inclusion.

- You lead by example, embodying Canva’s values, our no‑blame culture, and engineering best practices.

- Bonus: experience maintaining a widely used (ideally open‑source) SDK and developer tooling/documentation.

Why this role matters

The DX:Build team is Canva’s front door for developers. From starter kits and CLIs to the documentation on canva.dev, your team creates the tools and experiences that shape how thousands of developers build on Canva. The work is high‑visibility, both inside Canva and in the broader developer community. This C1 role is pivotal in ensuring that every touchpoint with Canva’s developer platform is elegant, reliable, and delightful.

About the team

With the proliferation of innovations in generative AI and as large organizations have increasingly complex workflows to manage their designs, Canva is well poised to become the platform that simplifies access and discovery of services related to visual design. We are already working with hundreds of developers to enable access to these exciting products with our Apps SDK and Canva public REST API

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.

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