Senior Machine Learning Engineer - Elements 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. 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 Role/Specialty:

As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer on Elements Platform, you'll build the ML systems that power how style gets understood — and how that understanding gets reflected in the elements generated for people's designs. Beyond that, you'll help shape how templates and elements get generated at scale. You'll work closely with the Content Engine, Core Research, and AI Media teams to take projects from a strong idea to a dependable, scaled system. This is a role for someone who wants to own real ML infrastructure — not just train models, but ship, monitor, and improve systems that directly shape what millions of people see when they open Canva. You'll have real autonomy to identify problems, propose solutions, and see them through to production.

What you’ll do (responsibilities):

• Design, build, and ship ML models that power content generation and quality eval scoring for Canva's generated element and template library.

• Own the full ML lifecycle — from data pipelines and training through to deployment, monitoring, and iteration.

• Partner with Content Engine, CORE AI Research, AI Media, and Discovery teams to align ML work with the broader content strategy.

• Diagnose and resolve issues across model performance, data quality, and production reliability.

• Run experiments to validate ML approaches before scaling them, with clear success metrics.

• Contribute to the engineering standards and tooling that make ML development faster and more reliable across the group.

• Communicate technical tradeoffs clearly to both engineering and non-engineering stakeholders.

What we're looking for:

You have solid experience building and deploying machine learning systems in production, not just prototyping them. You're comfortable owning a problem end-to-end, from framing it, to building the model, to making sure it holds up once it's live. You care about the practical tradeoffs between model quality, latency and cost, and you know how to make good calls under uncertainty. You collaborate well with engineers, product and content teams, and you're motivated by seeing your work show up in something millions of people use every day. Curiosity and a willingness to dig into ambiguous problems matter more to us than ticking every box on a skills list.

What You'll Learn & Build:

• Deep experience scaling ML systems for a content platform used by hundreds of millions of people.

• Exposure to the full spectrum of content ML work — from generation to design understanding.

• Opportunities to shape ML engineering practice across the Content Product group.

• Growth toward technical leadership, with real scope to define and drive your own roadmap.

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