Engineering Manager - Content Machine Learning

  • Full-time
  • Recruitment type: Permanent

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. 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.

Job Description

About the team

Join the innovation powerhouse - Content Machine Learning team at Canva! Our vision is to empower all our users with the safest and highest quality content at scale. We build models and human-in-the-loop workflows to amplify our content review efforts so that we can:

  1. Unlock review operations with review automation

  2. Close the loop for feedback to our models and raise the quality bar

  3. Ensure the safety of our library for all our users, including students

Finally, our crazy big goal is to build an automated review system with humans at the heart of operations, leading the continuous improvement and evolution of the system.

As the Engineering Manager for Content ML, you'll coach a team of talented and high performing bunch of machine learning engineers working across content moderation, enrichment, review, and scalable automation. You'll define the team’s vision and guide strategic delivery aligned with Canva's goals. You’ll collaborate closely with content experts, review operations, product managers, and machine learning teams to create infrastructure that makes millions of assets reviewed every day.

About the team

Join the innovation powerhouse - Content Machine Learning team at Canva! Our vision is to empower all our users with the safest and highest quality content at scale. We build models and human-in-the-loop workflows to amplify our content review efforts so that we can:

  1. Unlock review operations with review automation

  2. Close the loop for feedback to our models and raise the quality bar

  3. Ensure the safety of our library for all our users, including students

Finally, our crazy big goal is to build an automated review system with humans at the heart of operations, leading the continuous improvement and evolution of the system.

As the Engineering Manager for Content ML, you'll coach a team of talented and high performing bunch of machine learning engineers working across content moderation, enrichment, review, and scalable automation. You'll define the team’s vision and guide strategic delivery aligned with Canva's goals. You’ll collaborate closely with content experts, review operations, product managers, and machine learning teams to create infrastructure that makes millions of assets reviewed every day.

What you’ll do

  • Lead and grow a high-performing team of Machine Learning Engineers focused on automating content review and moderation across Canva’s Content Library.

  • Set and execute the technical vision and strategy for ML-driven safety, quality, and policy enforcement across text, image, video, audio and template content.

  • Design and scale robust ML systems — including experimentation frameworks, evaluation pipelines, monitoring, and feedback loops to continuously improve model performance and close the gap between manual review and automation.

  • Partner cross-functionally with Content, Product, Review Ops, and Review Engineering to deliver impactful, user-facing solutions and scalable human-in-the-loop systems.

  • Drive large, end-to-end initiatives from problem framing and roadmap definition through to delivery, experimentation, rollout, and impact measurement.

  • Uplift engineering excellence through strong technical direction, pragmatic architecture decisions, and a healthy code review and knowledge-sharing culture.

  • Coach and mentor engineers to navigate complex technical challenges and do the best work of their lives.

  • Champion operational excellence, responsible AI, and safety-by-design, ensuring our systems serve all users, including students and educators, with quality, integrity, and trust.

  • Stay ahead of industry trends and emerging ML best practices, continuously evolving the domain to meet Canva’s scale and ambition.

You're probably a match if

  • You’re passionate about coaching and developing engineers, creating a culture of growth and support.

  • You’re experienced in designing systems at scale, with a focus on reliability, performance, and extensibility.

  • You collaborate cross-functionally and thrive in partnerships with product, ML, and content stakeholders.

  • You think strategically and deliver pragmatically, balancing long-term vision with immediate needs.

  • You value diversity, empathy, and inclusion, and lead in a way that fosters belonging and trust.

  • You have experience leading an engineering team in a Product or SaaS environment, ideally within ML or applied AI domains.

  • Prior experience in text, image, video, and audio understanding is highly desirable.

Additional Information

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 range 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.

We celebrate all types of skills and backgrounds at Canva so even if you don’t feel like your skills quite match what’s listed above - we still want to hear from you!

Please note that interviews are conducted virtually.

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