Software Engineer - Core Platforms & Libraries (Java)

Canva, Sydney

Amazingly Simple Graphic Design Software

Duration: Full-Time

At Canva, our mission is to democratize design and empower creativity and visual expression for every person, on every platform. Since launch in April 2013, our user base has grown exponentially, amassing over 10 million users in over 100 languages, making us one of the world's fastest-growing technology companies. As of today, we've achieved profitability, and the company is valued over $1-billion, which comfortably prepares us for the next phase of growth and development.

This role sits within the Gateway Team, which is responsible for the front line of our microservices, as well as the journey a request takes while travelling from one service to another. Gateway’s work is based on two cornerstones: Reliability and Velocity. We want to ensure that every request that hits Canva goes through the Gateway components, at ludicrous speeds, and that the developers who work on the platform can be efficient, productive, and most importantly, happy.

Role Responsibilities

As an individual contributor, design and implement tools and libraries to improve the reliability of the canva microservices (for instance, adding a new long-awaited feature in our circuit breaker library)
Conduct and organise reliability experiments to identify possible scenarios in which failures might occur and verifying the reliability measures
Design and build services and tooling that help ensure each of Canva’s microservices are working optimally and are resilient to failures
Have widespread impact across the organisation by facilitating and spearheading cross-team initiatives that raise the bar for reliability, velocity and security
Deep investigation into production incidents followed up by applying the learning to code
Researching, developing, and justifying the best choices in the form of design docs for features that will shape the future of Canva
Identifying and addressing performance bottlenecks within the application and broader infrastructure
Propose new approaches and solutions to ensure we future-proof Canva’s distributed cloud infrastructure as we scale. Participating in design meetings, hiring interviews, and code reviews

Required Skills & Experience

Five-plus (5+) years of commercial experience developing complex, distributed web applications on the JVM; experience writing Java (experience with other JVM languages such as Scala, Kotlin, etc is a big plus - however, we primarily use Java 13)
Familiar with asynchronous or reactive programming techniques and associated patterns; At our scale, writing blocking code is often not an option
Comfortable with computer science and engineering fundamentals: concurrency, data structures, and distributed systems
Experience working in large distributed cloud environments (ideally AWS); CDNs, DNS. We're hosted on AWS and leverage the tools they provide as much as possible
Disciplined coding practices, experience with code reviews and pull requests, and a creative and conceptual problem-solving approach as opposed to framework or library-focused; We strive to build fast and lean solutions; not library/framework-heavy patchwork
Strong communication and team collaboration skills, both written and verbal. A Canva engineer strives to understand the exact problem before jumping into writing code - look before you leap!

Nice to have; Not required!

Experience with RPC Frameworks, Finagle, Thrift or gRPC will be a huge plus, but not required; We strive to make sure that the communication layer is not a bottleneck, and simplifies the life of the product engineers as much as possible
Knowledge of networking protocols such as TCP, HTTP 1/2, QUIC, protobuf, etc. would be a big plus; The life of a request doesn't start inside the backend web server, but rather in the browser of a user
An understanding of resiliency techniques and patterns - load balancing, throttling, back pressure, circuit breaking, etc; For Canva, reliability is a feature, and the Gateway and broader infrastructure teams aim to provide the best tools possible to the application engineers to ensure that Canva stays available at all times.

Benefits

Competitive salary, plus stock options via our ESOP plan
Flexible daily working hours, we value work-life balance
Breakfast and lunch prepared by our wonderful Vibe team
Onsite-Gym and Yoga Membership
End-of-Trip Facilities: Bicycle parking and showers
Generous parental (including secondary) leave policy
Pet-friendly offices
Internal Coaches and an Employee Wellness Program
Sponsored social clubs, team events, and celebrations
This role is open to remote applicants based in Australia

The Canva workspace is set up for you to do your best work and have a great time doing so, with breakout areas, little nooks, and quiet places to retreat.

Want to experience Canva for yourself?

Check out what life is like at Canva on Instagram.

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Get to know our Chef, Chris

Meet our CEO, Melanie

Finally, give Canva a go!

If you're seeking professional growth and enjoy working on large, distributed, cloud-based applications that delight our millions of individual and business users alike - then apply now to be considered for the position!

We will not accept or review any CVs from external recruitment agencies.

About Canva

About us At Canva, we create tools that empower the world to design. Our platform combines a drag-and-drop design tool with a stock library of over 1 million photographs, illustrations and imagery. You can also choose from hundreds of professional templates to create social media graphics, presentations, flyers, posters, invitations and so much more. Our mission is to make design simple for everyone. Driven by a team of talented thinkers, an amazing culture and remarkable growth trajectory – we’re out to change the world, one design at a time.