Staff Software Engineer - (Portable Platform) Rust/C++
Canva · Sydney, Australia · 1mo ago
Company Description
Job Description
Join the team redefining how the world experiences design.
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.
Where and how you can work
Our flagship Sydney campus is uniquely Canva - an extension of our Surry Hills neighbourhood. It’s a thoughtfully designed space with plenty of room to collaborate, focus, and connect.
This role is based in Sydney, and we’re looking for someone who calls it home. Our hybrid way of working gives you the flexibility to work remotely, and to come together on campus for meaningful in-person collaboration and connection when it matters most. 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
Mobile Platform owns how Canva runs on iOS and Android, and the portable libraries layer is one of the most technically interesting pieces of the mobile bet. Every product team at Canva builds on top of what this group ships. Write the foundational libraries once, in a performant system language, and run them everywhere. Rust and C are on the table. The interface, the safety model, and the ergonomics for engineers consuming them across every runtime are the open problems.
The strategic bet is a hybrid stack with React Native at its core, supported by a set of portable libraries that run across iOS, Android, and web from a single codebase. This role sits at the heart of the portable libraries work. Hundreds of millions of users open Canva on a phone or tablet, and the libraries you build will run underneath every one of them.
There's a second reason this work matters now. This is where deep mobile expertise meets systems programming. Not many engineers operate at that intersection. The ones who do shape how products like Canva get built for the next decade.
.At the moment, this role is focused on:
Owning the portable libraries problem space: Define and build the libraries that run across iOS, Android, and web. The interface, the safety model, and the ergonomics for consumers in every runtime are yours to shape.
Working in system languages: Rust and C++ are the tools for the foundational layer. Build production-grade libraries that need to be fast, safe, and reliable across every device Canva ships to.
Joining a technical leadership group: This isn't a lone-Staff seat. You'll work alongside other Staff engineers shaping the mobile platform's technical direction, with room to flex into the problems where your strengths land hardest.
Leading with code, not whiteboards: Canva doesn't have an architecture function — Staff engineers stay hands-on. This role is heavily hands-on. The work is the work.
Communicating across the stack: The libraries you build will be consumed by frontend engineers who don't write Rust. Strong technical communication isn't a nice-to-have for this role. It's how the work lands.
Sparring with strong peers: The technical debate is hard, fast, and substantive. Bring strong opinions, change your mind when better evidence shows up. The bar is high.
Influential Individual Contributor: No direct reports. But how you operate sets the standard others reach for.
What success looks like. The portable libraries ship to production and run reliably across iOS, Android, and web. The interface feels native to the engineers consuming it from every runtime. The patterns set by this role become the foundation that other mobile work at Canva builds on.
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
Mobile depth: Built production mobile software on iOS and Android, not just one. You understand the platforms deeply enough to know where they diverge, where they don't, and how to write libraries that feel native on both.
System languages: Shipped production code in Rust. The portable libraries are the centre of gravity for this role, and they live in this layer.
Staff altitude: You've been operating where both the problem and the solution are unknown. You walk into ambiguous work saying "this is the shape of the problem, this is what I think we should do, here's where we'll experiment."
Cross-platform fluency: You understand what it takes to write code that runs well across multiple runtimes. You've thought hard about ABI boundaries, memory safety across language barriers, and the ergonomics of foreign function interfaces.
Technical communication: You write design docs that other engineers act on. The libraries you build need to be understood by the engineers consuming them, and clear writing is how that happens.
AI fluency: Used agents in real work. Have a view on what changes for mobile and systems-level engineering when AI is a daily part of the workflow.
Technical knowledge
Native interop: Bindings between system languages and the iOS, Android, and JavaScript runtimes that consume them
Mobile fundamentals: Native iOS and Android depth, not just the JS side of the boundary
Cross-platform architecture: Portable library design across multiple runtimes
System languages: Rust or C++ for portable libraries that run across mobile platforms
Library API design: Making system-language code feel native to the mobile and frontend engineers who consume it
React Native runtime: Enough fluency to know how your libraries get consumed from the JS side
Deep fundamentals: Engineering fundamentals from a CS background, including data structures, complexity, the hard parts
Nice to have
Live migrations: Production experience evolving a mature mobile product onto a new architecture
Open-source contributions: React Native, Expo, or the cross-platform mobile ecosystem
Mobile CI/CD: Release trains and over-the-air updates at scale
About the Group and Team
Join Client Platform at Canva, where our mission is to ensure a delightful experience for every user on every device. Client Platform owns the foundations that every product team builds on, including Web Platform, Mobile Platform, and the user-facing surfaces of the product. Hundreds of millions of users sit on top of what this group ships. Every Canva product runs on it.
Mobile Platform is the group inside Client Platform responsible for how Canva runs on iOS and Android. We're the team for engineers who care deeply about mobile performance, who want to shape how cross-platform mobile gets built at scale, and who want to own the next decade of how Canva runs on a phone or tablet.
The work compounds in two directions at once. Every team at Canva benefits when the mobile platform gets faster and more capable. And the architectural decisions made here will outlast most of the systems built on top of them.
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
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.