Principal Partner Engineer, Ecosystem

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 campus is in Sydney. We also have a campus across the world and co-working spaces in numerous locations in the USA. But you have a 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. Youll work on Pacific Time hours and collaborate daily with Canvas engineering teams in AEST.

What youd be doing in this role

Canvas Ecosystem platform sits at the centre of how the worlds agentic AI systems connect to visual design. Anthropic OpenAI Google Microsoft Meta and the next wave of AI-native platforms are all building on against and through our MCP server REST APIs and Apps platform. The shape of those integrations is being decided right now at the engineering layer in real conversations with real technical counterparts.

• Drive decisions and alignment across Partners and Canva engineering. When a partner proposes a solution that wont work youll explain why generate the realistic option set and drive it to a decision with the owning Canva teams. Youll hold the technical detail on both sides and translate without losing precision.

• Set technical direction for Canvas external platform surface. The strategic question of where to invest deprecate and evolve doesnt sit inside any single team. Youll contribute to that direction grounded in partner signal and engineering reality.

• Ground partner conversations in working code. At this level partner conversations need to be grounded in whats actually runnable. You validate proposed solutions against Canvas real architecture to drive decisions that span multiple teams and partners using working code as the proof point.. When it helps unblock a decision youll sketch what a change could look like in code giving the owning Canva team a concrete starting point while leaving the change itself to them. The outcome is a partner decision backed by a runnable artifact.

• Drive product-line engineering across our external platform surfaces. Canvas agentic AI story is delivered across MCP REST APIs Apps-in-Canva and the middleware PaaS. Youll work across all of them making sure the overall surface stays coherent as new capabilities land. This is the product-line engineering layer that today falls between teams.

• Carry the platform direction outward early. Canva pivots on a dime. Youll sit inside Ecosystem engineering leadership hear direction as it forms and carry it to partners before theyre reacting to it. This is the single highest-leverage thing the role does for GTM.

• Shape strategic partner and customer engagements. For a small number of flagship engagements (major AI platforms and at a stretch strategically significant enterprise customers) youll lead the technical relationship end-to-end: shaping the roadmap driving the spikes carrying the decisions back through Canva.

Youll hold product shape engineering feasibility and partner intent in the same a single afternoon you might move between a product-roadmap discussion an API design review and a partnership alignment call and bring each of them closer to resolution.

Youre probably a match if

• You have 10 years of software engineering experience with several of those in roles operating at the seam between partner engineering platform engineering and product.

• Youve built developer platforms not just evangelised them. Youve shipped code in production on platforms used by external developers.

• You move fluidly between a product roadmap conversation a system design discussion and a partner negotiation and you bring each one forward.

• You bring a prototype or sample code to a hard conversation. You dont oversell whats doable and you dont overbuild what isnt needed.

• Youre technically deep on the modern AI platform stack. You have real opinions on MCP tool-use agentic API design and the tradeoffs between them.

• You communicate directly. You resolve misalignments by writing clearly.

• Youve worked inside product stacks that are heterogeneous and move fast. You know how to orient yourself quickly in a codebase you didnt write.

• You raise the technical bar across Ecosystem engineering by sharing knowledge feedback and bringing others into partner facing wins.

It would be great if you also had

• Hands-on experience shipping or integrating with MCP (Anthropic OpenAI Copilot or Gemini flavours).

• Strong TypeScript comfortable across front-end (React) and server-side JavaScript and the ability to read a Java backend even if you dont want to write one.

• A track record of turning ambiguous partner signal into crisp engineering decisions that Product and Engineering acted on.

Why this role matters

The agentic AI ecosystem is being wired together right now at the platform layer by a small number of people at a small number of companies. This role is one of the seats at that table on Canvas side. What you help decide in the next twelve months will shape how the worlds most-used visual design platform shows up in the worlds most-used AI systems for years. If youve been looking for an IC role with real leverage on what gets built this is it.

About the team

This role sits in the Ecosystem supergroup. Ecosystem owns Canvas external platform surface: MCP REST APIs Apps-in-Canva and the middleware PaaS. Ecosystem is 150 engineers (and 200 people overall) across developer experience apps and platform APIs plus a Solutions group that covers toolkits solutions engineering and Systems Integrators. This role works closely with the Ecosystem leadership team and partners directly with our Head of Partnerships on flagship partner engagements.

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