Staff Software Engineer - Native Infrastructure
Canva · Remote · Auckland, New Zealand · 1mo ago
Company Description
Job Description
Hey, g'day, 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.
What you'd be doing in this role:
Every native app Canva ships runs on a build and release system someone has to own, and right now that system sits on the critical path for the biggest client-side re-architecture in Canva's history. You'd be the engineer who takes that on: the Bazel rules, the monorepo, the release pipeline, the whole native foundation that hundreds of engineers build against every day.
Canva's mobile apps are moving off a browser-wrapped shell and onto a native-grade Portable Platform, and the build, release and CI foundations underneath that shift currently sit with a handful of people stitching together fragmented tooling. This role exists to give that foundation a single, deliberate owner, someone who can set the technical direction for iOS and Android build systems, the monorepo migration, and the React Native build pipeline that the Portable Platform depends on.
Bazel at mobile scale is still rare in this industry, which means most of the standards you'd set here don't exist yet anywhere else. You'd be defining what "good" looks like for build reliability, release safety and monorepo strategy across both platforms, and you'd be doing it with the benefit of a 12-month horizon rather than the current quarter, the difference between a senior engineer solving a defined problem and a staff engineer defining the problem worth solving.
At the moment, this role is focused on:
Build architecture: own the roadmap for Bazel build rules, React Native bundling and codegen, making trade-offs between short-term fixes and long-term foundations.
Release infrastructure: mature Canva's mobile release and deployment tooling, including OTA and staged rollout, so shipping mobile is predictable rather than fragile.
Monorepo migration: lead the staged migration of mobile repos into Canva's monorepo, owning build, test and release continuity throughout.
CI/CD strategy: set the quality gating strategy across the build pipeline, surfacing reliability and speed problems before they're handed to you.
Cross-platform foundations: evolve the React Native build pipeline into a shared foundation that serves both web and mobile, not just mobile in isolation.
Stakeholder alignment: work across Mobile Workflows, Cross Platform, Build Platform and DevX to pull fragmented tooling into one coherent system.
Team leverage: build monitoring and health signals for builds and releases, and mentor engineers so the standards you set outlast any one project.
Success here looks like build and release infrastructure that other teams stop noticing because it just works, and a mobile monorepo strategy that product teams build against without having to think about the plumbing underneath it.
You’re probably a match:
We'd love to hear from you if you fit one or more of these. You don't need to meet all of them, but the more the better and if you join the team, we're invested in helping you grow.
Experience:
Build systems: deep, hands-on expertise with Bazel, Gradle, or Xcode build systems at production scale.
Cross-team delivery: a track record of scoping and delivering complex projects that span multiple teams — migrations, monorepo consolidation, or build infrastructure at scale.
Mobile depth: strong native engineering background in iOS, Android, or both, with a real point of view on where cross-platform tooling helps and where it doesn't.
Release engineering: experience owning CI/CD or release pipelines that other teams depend on, not just contributing to them.
Strategic judgement: you balance short-term delivery against long-term architecture, and you can connect an external shift in tooling to a change in technical direction.
Standards setting: your documentation and technical practices have become the reference other engineers build on, not just something you wrote once.
Technical knowledge:
Bazel depth: build rules, custom rule sets, and monorepo build configuration at meaningful scale.
CI/CD pipelines: designing quality gates and pipeline stages that hold up as more teams depend on them.
React Native builds: bundling, codegen, and native module integration inside a production RN pipeline.
iOS build tooling: Xcode build system depth, including native iOS release configuration.
Android build tooling: Gradle depth, including native Android release configuration.
Release management: OTA updates, staged rollout, and deployment infrastructure for mobile apps.
Monorepo systems: experience migrating or operating within a large-scale monorepo.
Nice to have:
Cross-language interop: native bridging or codegen automation experience across JS and native runtimes.
Mobile performance: profiling and optimisation work on native or hybrid mobile apps.
Platform advocacy: experience getting engineering standards adopted beyond your own team.
Scale exposure: prior work on mobile products with a large, established user base.
About the Group and Team:
Join the Product Platform supergroup at Canva, where our mission is to build the pathways that empower Canva to deliver delightful experiences for billions of users.
Mobile Platform is the subgroup that provides optimal platform support for mobile development, from ideation to deployment, so that Canva's native apps feel delightful on every device. It sits within Product Platform alongside Client Platform, User Platform, API Platform and PIE, and currently spans the teams working on cross-platform product engineering and native mobile foundations.
Native Infra owns the native foundations underneath Canva's mobile apps: iOS and Android build systems, the migration of mobile repos into Canva's monorepo, release and deployment infrastructure, and the React Native build pipeline underpinning the Portable Platform. Every team shipping a mobile feature at Canva builds on top of what this team maintains, when Native Infra gets the foundation right, that reliability compounds across every product team that ships mobile.
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 success both 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
Other stuff to know?
We see AI as a powerful amplifier of creativity and technology at Canva. We're evolving how we assess AI skills in our Technology hiring experience — you'll tackle interactive, real-time challenges that reflect the kind of work we do. In some interviews, you may also be asked to solve a problem using an AI tool to show how you approach challenges with tech by your side.
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.