Staff Technical Program Manager - Developer Experience

About the Role and Work Environment

Join Canva's vibrant and collaborative Sydney office, situated in Surry Hills, designed to foster focus, teamwork, and connection. This position is based in Sydney, offering a hybrid work model that blends remote flexibility with on-site engagement to enhance collaboration and team cohesion.

Key Responsibilities

• Collaborate with Engineering leads and Product Managers to spearhead strategic and delivery planning including scoping, prioritization, estimation, and capacity management in line with company-wide processes.
• Thoroughly understand technical solutions, lead technical discussions, and assist teams in identifying and resolving technical gaps.
• Oversee the execution of large-scale, cross-functional programs characterized by significant organizational complexity.
• Manage technical dependencies across varied groups, facilitating discussions to address cross-team requirements.
• Drive timely delivery and remove obstacles for teams, managing risks and issues by escalating when necessary and pushing for prompt decision-making.
• Monitor and report program and project progress, establishing and sustaining processes and regular touchpoints for delivery management.
• Enhance delivery processes to boost velocity and collaboration by leveraging delivery tools, exploring new methods, and maintaining high reporting standards.
• Forge robust partnerships with leadership and engineering teams to influence strategic decisions and refine delivery effectiveness.
• Ensure accountability across team roles and responsibilities to guarantee collective success.
• Lead continuous improvement initiatives aimed at increasing the effectiveness of product development and engineering teams.

Candidate Profile and Qualifications

• At least 7 years of hands-on delivery experience within a SaaS environment.
• Proven track record of managing complex, multi-stakeholder programs that scale, preferably serving hundreds or thousands of engineers daily.
• Expertise in leading programs with rapidly evolving scopes, particularly in fast-changing AI technology domains.
• Strong skills in managing technical dependencies, navigating ambiguity, unblocking teams, and proactively mitigating risks and cross-team challenges.
• In-depth knowledge of software development life cycles at scale, including CI/CD pipelines and developer workflows tailored for technical users.
• Experience working with developer productivity tools such as code review automation, IDE integrations, CLI utilities, and cloud-based development environments like Devboxes.
• Empathetic understanding of developers’ needs and factors influencing adoption or resistance to new tools and workflows.
• Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills, with proven leadership clarity and influence to maintain team alignment.
• Consistent ability to improve processes and foster effective cross-functional collaboration.

Preferred Additional Experience

• Active user of AI coding tools such as Claude, Cursor, or analogous platforms, with practical insights into their functionality in enterprise engineering settings.
• Familiarity with agentic AI concepts including multi-agent orchestration, workflow chaining, and autonomous task execution (e.g., Coder Tasks in Devboxes, Otter workflow bundles).
• Experience in developing or managing AI-centric engineering tools or AI applications within platform and infrastructure contexts.

About the Infrastructure and Developer Experience Groups

The Infrastructure Group at Canva is dedicated to simplifying infrastructure for engineering teams through optimizations, tooling, best practice promotion, and mentoring, ensuring scalable and performant systems for a seamless user experience. The Developer Experience Group, part of the Platform organization within Infrastructure, focuses on empowering engineers to build and ship software efficiently and confidently by owning platforms, tools, and processes that support the engineering lifecycle.

Benefits

• Equity participation to share in Canva’s success.
• Inclusive parental leave policies supporting all parents and carers.
• An annual allowance for wellbeing, social events, and workspace setup.
• Flexible leave policies encouraging personal recharge and social good.

Additional Information

Hiring decisions prioritize experience, skills, passion, and cultural fit. Applicants are encouraged to share their pronouns and request any interview accommodations needed. Canva values diverse skills and backgrounds and welcomes candidates even if they do not meet every qualification. Interviews are conducted virtually.