Senior Machine Learning Engineer - Content Enrichment

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, and Auckland, NZ. 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 Group/Team

We’re part of the Content Group in the Content & Discovery Supergroup. Our group crafts and scales the building blocks of Canva’s extensive content library – empowering every user to find the perfect content for their design. The Content Enrichment team is focused on elevating the quality, relevance, and classification of Canva's media through automation, intelligent tagging, and platform integrations. Our work fuels Canva's discovery engine and directly impacts user satisfaction and engagement.

By identifying and experimenting with advanced metadata improvements, we directly amplify Search Impact, ensuring millions of users find exactly what they need in an instant. Our work serves as the foundational intelligence that powers the Canva features the world loves. From Style Match and Magic Video to Canva AI, our metadata is the one piece of the puzzle that unlocks these innovative experiences. If you use Canva, you’ve felt our team’s impact; we turn billions of data points into the seamless, everyday functionality that empowers our 240+ million monthly active users to create anything.

About the Role/Specialty

You will join a high-impact, collaborative team of Machine Learning and Backend Engineers dedicated to operational excellence. As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer, you will architect the intelligence that transforms how billions of media items are understood and surfaced, leading strategic decisions on model architecture and LLM orchestration.

We tackle subjective challenges—like visual style, aesthetics, and semantic understanding—that require nuanced modelling and rigorous iteration beyond standard approaches. You are someone who thrives at scale but still "sweats the details," ensuring a high bar for quality and proactively identifying edge cases that impact user trust. Your goal is to build systems that are not just functional, but truly great for our 240+ million monthly users.

What you’ll do (responsibilities)

• You have more than 5 years of hands-on experience in designing and developing complex ML models, especially in computer vision.
• You are experienced in R&D and conducting literature reviews on the latest ML techniques.
• You are proficient in PyTorch and setting up cloud ML infrastructure, with familiarity in LLMs and prompt engineering as a must.
• You are familiar with embeddings and vector databases.
• You have experience working with microservices and large monorepos.
• You follow disciplined coding practices, actively participate in code reviews, and set best-practice standards for your peers.
• You possess strong written and verbal communication skills and excel in team collaboration. As a Canva engineer, you take the time to fully understand the problem before diving into code.

Desirable:

• You hold a Master’s or PhD degree in a machine learning discipline.

• You have experience with Ray, Weights & Biases, and Kubernetes.

• You have experience hosting LLM architectures and fine-tuning them through reinforcement learning.

• While this is a machine learning role, our team operates at the intersection of Machine Learning and robust Platform Engineering. As we operate within a high-scale environment, familiarity with Java is a bonus (not tested during interviews)

What we're looking for

We’re looking for someone who combines strong machine learning expertise with a passion for building systems that reach millions of users. You enjoy solving complex problems with data and working collaboratively across teams to turn ideas into scalable solutions.

You’re comfortable working with large datasets, deploying models into production, and continuously improving systems through experimentation and iteration. You communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders and bring curiosity, ownership, and a growth mindset to your work.

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