Staff Machine Learning Engineer - Inference Platform

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, and Auckland, NZ. 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, focused on building the foundations that enable Canva to become an AI-first creative partner. Within this, the AI Platform group is responsible for developing scalable infrastructure and tooling that powers machine learning across Canva.

Our Inference Platform team sits at the heart of this mission—ensuring that ML models are deployed, served, and optimised efficiently at scale. We enable fast, reliable, and cost-effective inference so that every user interaction feels instant and magical. By building robust systems that support real-time AI features, we help unlock entirely new creative possibilities for our global community.

About the Role/Specialty:

As a Staff Machine Learning Engineer, you’ll lead multiple streams and provide architectural guidance on building and improving systems that serve machine learning models in production. You are across the ever evolving AI landscape and have a opinioned view on the patterns that will support Canva’s needs. You’ll partner closely with research scientists, backend engineers, and platform teams to ensure roadmap and strategy meets their evolving needs. You will be instrumental in defining and architecting how do we scale AI Inference Platform to enable Canva to 1 billion users and leading the frontier of AI innovation.

This role blends engineering excellence, technical leadership with deep AI/ML knowledge—you’ll be architecting production-grade systems, improving developer experience, and designing infrastructure that supports Canva’s rapidly growing AI capabilities. Your technical leadership, strategic guidance will directly impact how quickly and effectively users can access AI-powered features across the platform.

What you’ll do (responsibilities):

• You’ll design, build, and maintain scalable systems for serving machine learning models in production

• You’ll architect and implement self hosting large language models

• You’ll evolve the platform to significantly elevate developer experience

• You’ll drive efficient utilization of AI ML workloads by working closely with researchers and engineers to productionise models

• You’ll provide guidance on adoption of inference providers, neo cloud providers and assist in maturing the inference providers

• You’ll identify opportunities to improve infrastructure and drive technical enhancements across the platform

• You’ll provide on call support to the services supported by the team

What we're looking for:

We’re looking for someone who is passionate about building reliable, scalable AI ML systems and is excited by the opportunity to work at the intersection of AI and infrastructure. You enjoy solving complex technical problems and are motivated by delivering real-world impact at scale.You are firmly grounded computer science and engineering fundamentals. You have strong background in designing, building and running high-performance distributed systems. You likely have some battle wounds from deploying or supporting machine learning models in production. You thrive collaborating across teams and in a fast-paced environment. Most importantly, you bring a growth mindset and a desire to help shape the future of AI at Canva.

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

• Hard won technical expertise from navigating the challenges of scaling a platform with fast moving technology landscape and evolving product needs

• Deep expertise in large-scale ML systems and real-time inference platforms

• Deep expertise to cutting-edge AI/ML technologies and production challenges at scale

• Growth in system design, scalability, and performance optimisation

• The chance to architect the platform to impactful AI features used by millions 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