Staff Technical Program Manager - Generative AI, remote across ANZ

Job 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. We also have a campus in Melbourne and co-working spaces in Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. But you have choice in where and how you work, we trust our Canvanauts to choose the balance that empowers them and their team to achieve their goals.

What you’d be doing in this role

As Canva scales change continues to be part of our DNA. But we like to think that's all part of the fun. So this will give you the flavour of the type of things you'll be working on when you start, but this will likely evolve.

• Drive global AI research delivery: Lead planning and execution across Core’s major research programs, aligning distributed teams in Australia, Vienna, China, and San Francisco. Ensure clarity of scope, timelines, milestones, and quality expectations, and see these programs through from research planning to production readiness.

• Coordinate cross-time-zone research programs: Create the operational systems that keep global research work moving—scheduling collaboration windows, managing dependencies, unblocking researchers, and ensuring work progresses smoothly despite geographic distribution.

• Bridge research and product: Partner with Product, Engineering, and Go-to-Market teams to identify high-quality research output suitable for productisation. Bring structure to evaluation, prioritisation, and handover processes so strong research becomes high-impact product features.

• Ensure high-quality research operations: Introduce program governance, consistent reporting, risk surfacing, and standardised ways of working across Core. Improve predictability, transparency, and delivery confidence across all research programs.

• Support AI model development: Help coordinate experiments, data needs, and model training cycles. Facilitate discussions on trade-offs, sequencing, and technical decisions to help teams move quickly and responsibly.

• Build alignment and trust: Facilitate communication between researchers, product teams, leadership, and stakeholders. Bring clarity to complex discussions, align conflicting priorities, and maintain strong, transparent relationships across the organisation.

• Mentor and uplift others: Contribute to TPM craft across the group by sharing best practices, improving operational frameworks, and supporting other TPMs and leaders working with AI-driven teams.

You're probably a match if you have

• 5+ years of experience as a Technical Program Manager or equivalent role in a technology company.

• Strong technical aptitude, with familiarity in concepts related to ML, data pipelines, experimentation, and model development - text to image and video experience and familiarity is critical.

• Experience working with Product Managers, Engineers, and Researchers to deliver complex, multi-team initiatives.

• Proven ability to manage large programs end-to-end across distributed teams and time zones.

• Strong strategic thinking, able to balance long-term research goals with near-term product needs.

• Comfortable navigating ambiguity, making sense of evolving research environments, and bringing structure to uncertain problem spaces.

• Excellent communication skills, capable of managing up, across, and outward with clarity and accountability.

• Skilled at resolving conflicting priorities, aligning teams, and establishing delivery confidence.

• Committed to uplifting craft, mentoring others, and building scalable delivery practices for a growing research organisation.

• Curious about AI and enthusiastic about using AI tools to improve program management, team efficiency, and decision-making.

About the Group/Team

The CORE (Canva Original Research & Exploration) group was founded in 2025 to help Canva realise its full potential in empowering the world to design through advanced AI capabilities. CORE serves as Canva’s AI research backbone, bringing together a globally distributed team focused on pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in design intelligence.

The team works with the latest LLMs while also training Canva’s own models tailored to design-specific tasks. By advancing research in multimodal understanding, generation, and interaction, CORE enables the AI-powered experiences that underpin Canva’s next decade of innovation.

About the Role/Specialty

At Canva, our ability to deliver world-class AI capabilities depends on how well we coordinate, align, and operationalise the work of our rapidly expanding global research organisation. As a Staff Technical Program Manager in the CORE group, you’ll play a critical role in enabling this by driving clarity, consistency, and execution across some of Canva’s most complex and high-impact AI research programs.

In this role, you will partner closely with research leads, senior managers, and product teams to streamline how we plan, track, and deliver AI research. You’ll help set clear priorities, manage cross-team dependencies, and ensure programs move forward with positive urgency. Equally, you’ll be comfortable navigating technical trade-offs with researchers and engineers, communicating program status, and surfacing risks early.

Your work will span the full lifecycle of CORE’s global initiatives: aligning distributed research teams across time zones, coordinating experiments and milestones, and ensuring high-quality research outputs make their way into productised AI features. You will be a delivery specialist, a strategic operations partner, and the connective layer that helps CORE scale efficiently while maintaining research excellence.

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 range 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 see AI as a powerful amplifier of creativity and technology at Canva. We’re evolving how we assess AI skills in our Technology hiring experience - you’ll tackle interactive, real-time challenges that reflect the kind of work we do. In some interviews, you may also be asked to solve a problem using an AI tool to show how you approach challenges with tech by your side. Your recruitment partner will walk you through what to expect.

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.

We celebrate all types of skills and backgrounds at Canva so even if you don’t feel like your skills quite match what’s listed above - we still want to hear from you!

Please note that interviews are conducted virtually.