Company Description

Join the team redefining how the world experiences design.

Hey, g'day, mabuhay, kia ora,你好, hallo, vítejte!

Thanks for stopping by. We know job hunting can be a little time consuming and you're probably keen to find out what's on offer, so we'll get straight to the point. 

Where and how you can work

Our flagship campus is in Sydney, with a second campus in Melbourne and co-working spaces in Brisbane, Perth, & Adelaide. You have flexibility in how and where you work — whether that's from one of our spaces, from home, or a mix of both. This role is remote-friendly within Australia, so you can choose the setup that empowers you and your team to do your best work.

Job Description

About the Group/Team We are part of the Generative AI Supergroup, specifically within the AI Platform group, where we’re building the foundations that power Canva’s AI-first future. Our team focuses on creating scalable, reliable infrastructure and systems that enable teams across Canva to build, evaluate, and deploy machine learning models with confidence.

Within the Evaluations Platform, we play a critical role in ensuring that every AI experience meets Canva’s high standards for quality, safety, and usability. We collaborate closely with ML engineers, researchers, and product teams to define what “great” looks like for AI—and build the systems to measure it.

About the Role/Specialty As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer, you’ll bring strong technical expertise and a platform mindset to design and build evaluation systems that scale across Canva’s AI ecosystem. You’ll work on complex challenges such as surfacing insights from both human-in-the-loop and automated evaluations across a wide range of mediums and product areas.

You’ll operate with a high level of autonomy, contributing to technical direction within the team while collaborating with cross-functional partners. This role is perfect for someone who thrives on solving ambiguous problems, enjoys working at the intersection of ML and platform, and is motivated by delivering impactful, user-facing AI experiences.

What you’ll do (responsibilities)

• You’ll design and build scalable evaluation systems for machine learning models, including generative AI

• You’ll collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate evaluation into the ML lifecycle

• You’ll improve experimentation velocity by enabling reliable and automated evaluation workflows

• You’ll contribute to technical design discussions and help shape the team’s direction

• You’ll identify opportunities to improve systems, tooling, and processes across the AI Platform

• You’ll mentor peers and contribute to a strong engineering culture

What we're looking for

Please note, this is not a model building role, we work on a common core of platform functionality that is generalisable across domains, and often that means we skew more towards ML infrastructure or even backend service development problems than pure ML. This is role is also not a stepping stone to adjacent model development roles.

You’re an experienced Machine Learning Engineer who combines strong technical depth with a pragmatic, product-focused mindset. You enjoy tackling complex, ambiguous problems and turning them into scalable, reliable systems.

You likely have experience working with ML systems in production, including model evaluation, experimentation, or platform tooling. You’re comfortable collaborating with cross-functional teams and communicating technical concepts clearly. Most importantly, you’re motivated by building high-quality AI experiences that make a real impact for users around the world.

What the candidate will learn and how will they develop at Canva:

• Deep expertise in building and scaling ML evaluation systems in a world-class AI environment

• Exposure to cutting-edge Generative AI technologies and large-scale ML systems

• Opportunities to influence platform-level decisions impacting multiple teams

• Growth in technical leadership, stakeholder management, and cross-functional collaboration

• The chance to work on meaningful problems that impact millions of users globally

Additional Information

Don't tick all the boxes? Don't worry about that - nobody does!  

We’d still love to hear from you! At Canva, we know that great engineers come from a variety of backgrounds, and we value passion, curiosity, and a willingness to learn just as much as specific experience. If you're excited about this role but don’t tick every box, we encourage you to apply, you might a great fit in ways you didn’t expect!

What's in it for you?

Achieving our crazy big goals motivates us to work hard - and we do - but you'll experience lots of moments of magic, connectivity and fun woven throughout life at Canva, too. We also offer a stack of benefits to set you up for every success in and outside of work.

Here's a taste of what's 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  lifeatcanva.com 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.

All interviews are conducted virtually