Backend Software Engineer (Java) - Discovery Platform

Company 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. But we like to think that's all part of the fun. So this will give you the flavour of the type of things you'll be working on when you start, but this will likely evolve.

About The Discovery Platform Group

Almost 100% of our users will interact with the Discovery Group features every time they come to Canva. We are responsible for the AI, Machine Learning, Infrastructure, and User Experience that powers many parts of Canva’s core product experience.

Our work is the key discovery mechanism to promote and expose Canva’s content to current and potential users. Without good discovery, users will never know we even have content!

Some Of The Key Capabilities We Own/contribute Include

Running and deploying our core search and recommender indexes and services
Improving our ML rankers across search and recommendations
Integrating AI technologies into our ranking and content understanding capabilities
Building the amazing search and recommendations experience in the editor and marketplace
Building the private search experience - similar to Google Drive


In the era of artificial intelligence (AI), embracing the new possibilities it presents is imperative for Canva's long-term success. Discovery Platform sub-group has been entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining the highest throughput machine learning (ML) and information retrieval systems at Canva. Simultaneously, we are laying the groundwork for the next generation of ML and generative AI capabilities, ensuring Canva remains at the forefront of innovation in this dynamic landscape.

Job Description

What you’ll be doing in this role

Scale out our backend systems including Opensearch and Elasticsearch
Build and maintain new APIs to support Public and Private Search
Build and maintain platform capabilities that support internal teams
Build and maintain our own experimentation tool
Contribute to a culture of high collaboration and communication
Contribute to a strong culture of operational excellence where the team is proactively improving the performance of critical services it owns
Be a part of a fun and rewarding environment of learning and celebration


You're probably a match if

Commercial experience developing sophisticated web applications
Most of our code is in Java, so ideally you will be comfortable using Java.
Firmly grounded computer science and engineering fundamentals including concurrency, multithreading, data structures, solution design, architecture, and design patterns
Working collaboratively with team members and communicating effectively
Good writing and verbal communication skills
Previous on-call experience


Bonus Experience (not Mandatory)

You have experience in Search or worked with search related technologies such as Elasticsearch, Opensearch, etc.