Staff Software Engineer - Export

Overview

We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join the Export team within our Editing Platform group. This role focuses on ownership of how designs are rendered into files, including managing and evolving our Chromium-based export pipeline to maintain reliability as both the editor and Chromium evolve.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the technical direction for Canva's design rendering process and the Chromium-based export pipeline architecture.
• Serve as the go-to expert for complex rendering challenges such as upgrade issues, rendering race conditions, and incidents caused by changes in upstream Chromium.
• Develop proactive strategies to incorporate upstream updates, including building monitoring and testing tools to identify Chromium regressions early, and designing robust outputs resilient to frequent changes.
• Guide PDF accessibility and compliance efforts (PDF/UA, WCAG) for Enterprise exports, making decisions on tagging depth and build-versus-buy trade-offs.
• Drive improvements in export reliability and performance at scale, addressing format optimization, distributed system design, and large-scale failure modes.
• Mentor engineers through design reviews, collaborative debugging, and knowledge documentation to disseminate Chromium expertise across the team.
• Collaborate with the broader Editing Platform group and other teams to ensure new editor features operate reliably when exported.

Required Experience and Skills

• Extensive hands-on experience working inside Chromium or a comparable browser rendering engine, beyond peripheral interaction.
• Proficiency in C++ for navigating and debugging substantial third-party codebases.
• Background in rendering pipelines, graphics programming, or print production systems.
• Strong Java backend engineering skills, consistent with the product's technology stack.
• Proven track record of owning a technical domain end-to-end, including architecture definition, trade-off decisions, and long-term impact management.
• Expertise in debugging complex, multilayered systems across multiple codebases and languages, and leading teams through such investigations.
• Experience guiding and uplifting engineering peers through mentoring, design critiques, and standard setting.
• Experience maintaining systems with frequently changing upstream dependencies and developing sustainable strategies.

Desirable Skills

• Knowledge of PDF specifications or experience with generating and post-processing PDF files.
• Familiarity with accessibility standards in document or file outputs.

About the Team

The Export team manages one of the platform's most vital workflows: converting designs into downloadable files used by over 50 million weekly users. Focus areas include reliability, speed, and format flexibility. Beyond download flow, the team supports print production, AI model training, thumbnail generation, and seamless functioning of editor features with exports.

Additional Information

Hiring considers your experience, skills, passion, and cultural fit. Applicants are encouraged to share pronouns and any interview accommodations needed. The company values diverse backgrounds and encourages applications even if not all desired skills are met. All interviews are conducted virtually.