Senior Frontend Engineer - Video Web Engine

Canva

Canva

Software Engineering
Sydney, NSW, Australia
Posted on Feb 1, 2026

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.

Job Description

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.

What you’d be doing in this role

As Canva scales, change continues to be part of our DNA — and we like to think that's all part of the fun. So this will give you a flavour of the type of things you’ll be working on when you start, but this will likely evolve.

At present, you will be focused on:

  • Owning high-quality, frame-accurate video and audio playback on Canva’s web platform
  • Designing and evolving the core architecture that powers scalable web playback
  • Building performance-critical systems that operate beyond typical frontend abstractions
  • Driving resilient rendering and playback experiences across browsers and devices
  • Leading the adoption of next-generation playback technologies on the web
  • Partnering closely with product, editor, and platform teams to deliver playback as a shared capability
  • Improving playback quality, observability, and reliability for millions of users
  • Taking ownership of critical systems and raising the bar on performance and engineering quality
  • May also help shape longer-term playback strategy and technical direction as the platform evolves

This role is a key contributor to Canva’s broader shift toward treating playback as a platform capability — enabling feature teams to build new video experiences without needing to understand low-level rendering internals.

You’re probably a match if you:

  • Have deep expertise in JavaScript at a systems level (beyond typical framework usage)
  • Have experience building video, audio, graphics, or game-like systems in the browser
  • Understand rendering pipelines, frame timing, animation systems, or compositor-style architectures
  • Are comfortable working with canvas, workers, WebGL, WebAssembly, or modern multimedia APIs
  • Enjoy owning ambiguous problem spaces and delivering end-to-end technical outcomes
  • Care deeply about performance, reliability, and scalable browser architectures

You might be operating at a higher level if you’ve led platform-level initiatives or influenced technical direction beyond your immediate team.

Bonus if you’ve worked with:

  • Worker-based or multi-threaded browser architectures
  • Video composition or playback engines
  • Low-level performance instrumentation or quality-of-experience metrics

About the team

The Web Engine team sits within Canva’s Video Platform supergroup, focused on powering reliable, high-performance video creation and playback experiences on the web. We're laying the foundations — from runtime and rendering to developer experience — that empower product teams to deliver world-class video tools to millions of users.

We're also transitioning to unified ownership of playback rendering, enabling our team to operate playback as a platform service across Canva. This is a high-impact opportunity to help define the future of video at Canva.

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, connection 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 support 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.