Backend Software Engineer - Java, Product & Features
Canva and Project F
Canva has participated in Project F’s Program 50/50 since November 2019. Since then they have worked diligently to remove the systemic barriers identified for women in tech teams so that they can sustainably build gender-balanced teams.
This work is not easy and requires a consistent focus on structural change, removing bias from processes and systems and shifting the narrative on diversity and inclusion. Co-founder Cliff Obrecht is the Executive Sponsor of the program at Canva. Crystal Boysen, Head of People is leading the change across the entire organisation. The unique challenge of achieving gender balance within the subculture of technology has been made a strategic imperative and therefore treated as a high priority.
Job description - Backend Software Engineer - Java, Product & Features
Software engineering is the core of who Canva is. The Canva code base was built to scale from day one. This has allowed for a unique environment where engineers spend most of their time optimising performance and releasing new features rather than fixing legacy code. With adherence to fundamentals and first principles, the team strives to use the most appropriate tools for the tasks at hand, aiming to strike that carefully measured balance between getting things done and long-term maintainability of the code base and supporting infrastructure.
They promote a warm and collaborative work environment where engineers set big goals and are given the tools and support to achieve them. They also invite their engineers to contribute to the direction their peers are taking with proactive pair-ups for peer-reviewing of code as well as regular engineering forums for opinions and ideas to be heard. These practices ensure that knowledge is shared and releases are quick and efficient.
Finally - you're probably curious about their technology stack. At a high level, Canva's backend is powered by a set of services (some micro, some not-so-micro) built primarily in Java, hosted on Linux, sitting on AWS. They also sprinkle in some powerful open-source libraries and tools (have a look at finagle), as well as bespoke components to power some of the magic. You can find more about Canva’s engineering practices in this blog article.
Responsibilities
Your day to day activities will consist of solution design and hands-on software development – working closely with leads, designers, and product managers to deliver features and functionality to our customers all over the world
Once you’ve settled in and have a comfortable grasp of the product, environment, and processes, you’ll be given more responsibility and start leveraging your previous experience — bringing new ideas to the table concerning everything from feature development, process improvement, and product suggestions
Taking charge of your career development by seizing opportunities to work across different teams, technologies, and roles
Developing and iterating on technical proposals – outlining how solutions will be structured and developed
Developing solutions you’ve designed from the ground up through to deployment into production
Identifying and addressing performance bottlenecks within the application and broader infrastructure
Being responsible for the reliability of your solution, including monitoring and responding to incidents. They care about reliability greatly as your code is going to be used by millions of people
Participating in design meetings, hiring interviews, and code reviews
Performance debugging, benchmarking and building awesome things in general
Requirements
Commercial experience developing complex web applications
Most of our code is in Java, but we're pragmatic - we'll use whatever makes the most sense to complete a task (previous experience with other languages is great!)
Firmly grounded computer science and engineering fundamentals including concurrency, multithreading, data structures, solution design, architecture, and design patterns. You’d be surprised how often these things come up at Canva!
That you’re happy to roll the sleeves up and dive into java.util.concurrent from time to time 🙂
Working collaboratively with team members and communicating effectively
Benefits
Competitive salary, plus equity options
Flexible working hours, they mean it when they say that they value work-life balance
In-house chefs that cook delicious breakfast and lunch each day
Free Gym and Yoga
Generous parental (including secondary) leave policy
Pet-friendly offices
They offer a full relocation package (including visa)
To apply, complete the form below and we’ll be in touch shortly to discuss the role with you.