About Canva
Canva's mission is to empower the world to design. Machine learning is central to that: the ranking and search systems that help people find their content, the generative models that create designs from scratch, the pipelines that decide which model serves which request, and the infrastructure that turns research breakthroughs into features hundreds of millions of people use. Our ML engineers sit across product and platform teams (spanning Discovery, Generative AI, and Platform groups), each owning a distinct slice of how ML shows up for Canva's users.

About the role
As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer, you'll take a scoped ML problem and own it end to end: framing it, building and evaluating the solution, shipping it, and measuring the real-world impact. Depending on the team, that could mean ranking and relevance models, generative pipelines and model selection, or turning research prototypes into production-grade systems. What's constant is the level of ownership: you'll operate with minimal guidance, bring your own judgement to how a problem should be solved, and work closely with researchers, product engineers, and platform teams to get there.

What you'll do

• Build, evaluate, and ship ML systems in production, not just in a notebook, whether that's ranking, relevance, generation, or evaluation infrastructure

• Own a well-scoped project from problem framing through to shipped, measurable impact, with minimal guidance

• Work through real production trade-offs (quality, cost, latency) when choosing, integrating, or improving models

• Investigate and resolve quality, relevance, or reliability regressions in live systems

• Partner with research, product, and platform engineers to translate ambiguous problems into concrete, shippable plans

• Communicate technical trade-offs clearly, including to non-technical stakeholders, and share knowledge across your team

You're likely a match if you have

• Hands-on experience shipping ML systems to production at scale, not just training models in isolation

• The ability to define and move the metrics that actually matter for your domain, rather than optimising model accuracy alone

• A track record of taking a scoped project from idea to shipped with minimal guidance

• Strong software engineering fundamentals and fluency in a modern ML stack (Python, PyTorch or similar)

• High autonomy and comfort with ambiguity as products, models, and priorities evolve

• Clear communication and strong cross-functional collaboration skills

Nice to have

• Depth in one or more of: search and ranking systems, generative model evaluation/integration, distributed training or inference optimisation, MLOps

• Experience working on systems used by millions of people

• A history of shipping ML-powered product features end to end, not just research outputs

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
• Health benefits plans to support you and your wellbeing
• 401(k) retirement plan with company contribution
• 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 information.

Other stuff to know
We make hiring decisions based on your experience, skills, merit and business needs, in compliance with applicable local laws. 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!

When you apply, please tell us the pronouns you use and any reasonable adjustments you may need during the interview process. Please note that interviews are conducted virtually.

At Canva, we value fairness, and we strive to provide competitive, market-informed compensation whilst ensuring internal equity within the team in each region. The target salary range for this position is $220,000 - $280,000. When calculating offers, we make salary decisions based on market data and candidates' skills and experience.

Join the team redefining how the world experiences design.
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Where and how you can work
Our head office is in Sydney, Australia, but San Francisco is now home to our US operations.  The role is listed as hybrid, meaning we are incredibly flexible and empower you to work where you prefer - whether that's at home or at the office.