Senior Research Engineer - Audio & Video AI

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. This role is preferred to be based out of our Sydney office, where the majority of this team is located. 

Job Description

About the team:

This role is in the audio-video storytelling research team, which is part of the larger video storytelling research team in Canva Research. The audio-video storytelling team has a focus on audio research but also carries out video and design research where audio is present. We make audio storytelling accessible and intuitive for everyone.

About the role:

In your role as Senior Research (Machine Learning) Engineer, you’ll be at the heart of our mission to make advanced machine learning design tools easy for everyone to use. Your work will help create new features that make it simpler and more fun for Canva users to bring their ideas to life. By developing and integrating these cutting-edge technologies, you’ll help us achieve our goal of empowering the world to design. Your contributions will enhance user experiences, drive Canva’s growth, and keep us at the forefront of the design industry. Together, we’ll make a real impact and shape the future of design.

At the moment, this role is focused on:

• Working closely with Research Scientists on research in audio, video and multimodal AI, with a focus on audio, translating theory into practical applications

• Rapid development of prototypes to evaluate and demonstrate new concepts, models, systems and ideas quickly with Research Scientists and other stakeholders

• Designing, developing, and implementing innovative model architectures and algorithms for audio, video and multimodal content generation and analysis

• Building sustainable and scalable ML pipelines that support continuous integration, deployment, evaluation and monitoring of generative models

• Optimizing and scaling models for efficiency, latency, and throughput across large distributed systems

• Enhancing and maintaining high-quality datasets and annotations to fuel multimodal learning

• Collaborating closely with cross-functional stakeholders across Canva to build aligned, technically feasible, and high-impact solutions

You’re probably a match if you:

• Have deep experience developing AI models, including Diffusion Models, GANs, or Transformers, and can speak to their real-world application

• Have successfully managed and optimized large-scale distributed training (e.g. across 100s of GPUs) and understand the infrastructure trade-offs

• Bring a strong understanding of ML principles and have used frameworks like PyTorch to develop and optimize performant models

• Demonstrate solid engineering practices – clean code, rigorous testing, CI/CD workflows, and robust observability in production

• Thrive in ambiguity, show end-to-end ownership of complex initiatives, and consistently drive for pragmatic solutions

• Communicate clearly, collaborate with kindness, and value knowledge-sharing and co-creation across teams

• Have experience working with large-scale audio and/or video datasets including preprocessing, feature extraction and evaluation of perceptual quality.

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.