Senior Research Engineer Design Generation

At Canva our mission is to empower the world to design. Were building AI that feels magical and lands real impact for millions of people - helping anyone create with confidence. Were looking for a Machine Learning Engineer with strong Research Engineer / Applied Scientist instincts to bridge cutting-edge research and production systems owning the pipelines tooling and experimentation loops that turn ambitious ideas into scalable shippable reality.

About the team:

The Design Generation team builds machine learning systems that generate and enhance graphic designs directly in the Canva editor. We combine research and engineering to make complex design tasks simple and accessible for everyone. The team includes Research Scientists and Machine Learning Engineers working closely with backend frontend and platform teams. This role sits at the intersection of research and engineering: sometimes leaning into applied research and hypothesis testing other times taking deep ownership of reusable training inference and evaluation pipelines that multiple teams depend on.

Youll play a key role in:

• Standardising and scaling evaluation training and data pipelines

• Helping research ideas move quickly from prototype to production

• Ensuring our solutions fit coherently into Canvas broader AI and product stack

By building durable foundations and enabling fast iteration youll directly support Canvas vision to empower the world to design.

About the role:

As a Machine Learning Engineer youll partner closely with Research Scientists to test hypotheses quickly while also owning the engineering work required to make those ideas reliable reusable and production-ready.

Youll take responsibility for shared pipelines and infrastructure that power multimodal generative systemshelping unblock research velocity reduce duplicated effort and improve system performance at scale. Your work will directly influence the quality speed and reliability of AI-powered design features used by millions of Canva users.

What youll do in the role:

• Partner closely with Research Scientists on multimodal generative AI translating research ideas and hypotheses into practical testable systems

• Own and evolve reusable training inference and evaluation pipelines working across teams to standardise where possible

• Convert experimental Python research code into scalable maintainable and testable production code

• Design build and maintain large-scale data and evaluation pipelines that support rapid experimentation and reliable comparisons

• Support fast hypothesis testing by enabling lightweight experiments and clear evaluation signals

• Optimise models and pipelines for real-world constraints including performance latency cost and reliability

• Collaborate with stakeholders across Canva (including other AI teams) to align on shared approaches and avoid duplicated effort

• Stay ahead of industry trends and translate cutting-edge AI research into actionable product features

• Contribute to team roadmaps by identifying data evaluation or infrastructure bottlenecks and proposing solutions

Youre likely a match if you have:

• Strong software engineering skills in Python with experience building production-grade ML systems

• Experience owning training inference and evaluation pipelines for machine learning models

• Experience with RGBA data and layered image representations

• Hands-on experience with large-scale ML data workflows (e.g. Ray or similar frameworks) including data loading batching sharding and versioning

• Solid understanding of ML training requirementsyou know what a good system looks like and can anticipate downstream issues

• Experience working with cloud infrastructure (AWS) and distributed storage systems

• Ability to operate comfortably in ambiguous problem spaces balancing research exploration with engineering rigour

• Strong communication skills and a collaborative mindsetyou can work effectively with researchers MLEs and software engineers across disciplines

• A collaborative approach comfortable taking ownership and iterating quickly.

Nice to have:

• Experience working with multimodal data (e.g. imagetext pairs design assets).

• Experience building synthetic data generation pipelines.

• Experience building impactful end-to-end demos that showcase research impact.

• Familiarity with evaluation frameworks data quality metrics and model monitoring systems.

• Prior research experience including authorship or co-authorship of research papers or contributions to open-source datasets benchmarks or ML tooling.

Additional Information :

Whats in it for you

Achieving our crazy big goals motivates us to work hard - and we do - but youll 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.

Heres a taste of whats 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 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 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 :

Yes

Employment Type :

Full-time