Staff Software Engineer User Platform (Java)

Join the team redefining how the world experiences design.

Hey gday mabuhay kia ora 你好 hallo vítejte!

Thanks for stopping by. We know job hunting can be a little time consuming and youre probably keen to find out whats on offer so well get straight to the point.

Where and how you can work

Our flagship Sydney campus is uniquely Canva - an extension of our Surry Hills neighbourhood. Its a thoughtfully designed space with plenty of room to collaborate focus and connect.

This role is based in Sydney and were looking for someone who calls it home. Our hybrid way of working gives you the flexibility to work remotely and to come together on campus for meaningful in-person collaboration and connection when it matters most. We trust our Canvanauts to choose the balance that empowers them and their team to achieve their goals.

What youd be doing in this role

As Canva scales change continues to be part of our DNA. But we like to think thats all part of the fun. So this will give you the flavour of the type of things youll be working on when you start but this will likely evolve.

At the moment this role is focused on:

• Design build and own core components of Canvas authorization and access control systems including our centralised SpiceDB-backed authorization platform.
• Help product teams adopt these capabilities designing the patterns tooling and integrations that make authorization easy to get right at Canvas scale.
• Make sound technical trade-offs for critical high-availability infrastructure serving hundreds of millions of users.
• Partner across Security API Platform Admin Experience and product engineering to align on requirements and drive adoption.
• Help shape the platforms direction the subject/identity model access control model request context and authorization for agentic AI workflows.
• Mentor and uplift engineers across the team on system design and IAM best practice.

Youre probably a match if you have experience

Were looking for a strong senior/staff backend engineer with hard-won experience in Identity & Access Management at scale energised by hard platform problems at the intersection of security reliability and developer experience. You combine deep hands-on technical ability with the knack for bringing other teams along making complex authorization and access control concepts legible and driving adoption not just correctness. Most importantly you want to work on problems that matter systems that will help power the next billion Canva users.

Essential Technical Expertise

• Direct experience with Identity & Access Management at scale designing and operating authorization and access control systems (RBAC / ReBAC / ABAC or Zanzibar-style systems such as SpiceDB) in production.
• Strong backend engineering building and running high-performance high-availability services (Java a plus) with solid distributed-systems and CS fundamentals.
• Strong system design turning ambiguous cross-cutting problems into tractable well-sequenced work.
• A track record of driving adoption of platform capabilities across engineering teams with clear technical communication and stakeholder alignment.
• Strong written and verbal communication; collaborative across teams.

Nice to have

• Experience with policy languages / authorization engines OPA Cedar (or similar).
• Experience with Zanzibar-style authorization systems (SpiceDB Google Zanzibar).
• Experience evolving large services in production without disrupting dependents.

About the group

User Platform at Canva are a platform team responsible for the AuthZ/N infrastructure that serves as a backbone to Canva Products. User Platform own the identity authentication authorisation user profile and account systems that connect hundreds of millions of users to the tools they love and that every product team at Canva depends on to function. Our work directly enables Canvas ambition to become a secure AI-native company at a billion-user scale: from enforcing bounded auditable access for agentic AI workflows to powering seamless product onboarding for acquisitions and new product lines.

About the role

As a Staff Backend Engineer in User Platform youll be a senior technical leader on Authorization at Canva spanning both our centralised authorization platform (backed by SpiceDB) and the access control systems that govern who can do what across our products. Youll own significant parts of the design and delivery set the patterns product teams adopt and partner closely with Security API Platform and product engineering to roll them out safely at Canvas scale. If youve solved hard Identity & Access Management problems at scale and want to apply that to one of the worlds most-used platforms this role is for you.

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 dont feel like your skills quite match whats listed above - we still want to hear from you!

Please note that interviews are conducted virtually.

Remote Work :

No

Employment Type :

Full-time