Principal Software Engineer - User Platform

Canva

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About The Position

Join the team powering the foundation of Canva’s world-class user experience. As Canva scales, change continues to be part of our DNA. You’ll lead the technical direction for video technology that powers millions of daily exports, architecting scalable, high-performance rendering systems and pioneering AI-powered video features. You’ll work alongside talented engineers, tackling complex problems and pushing the boundaries of browser-based video creation. At the moment, this role is focused on You'll own the technical direction for User Platform's most complex cross-cutting programmes — Centralised Permissions & AuthZ, Profile Decomposition, and Authentication Platform — setting the architectural strategy and driving delivery across teams. You'll serve as the platform's principal-level authority across Identity & Access Management, providing credible technical leadership to Security, API Platform, Admin Experience, and product engineering simultaneously. You'll architect and oversee the migration of 3,000+ access checks into a structurally-enforced authorisation platform (SpiceDB/Zanzibar-style), designing the adoption patterns and microsyncs infrastructure that makes this tractable at Canva's scale. You'll make high-stakes technical trade-offs for critical infrastructure — including profile service decomposition and authentication pluggability — balancing reliability, velocity, and security for systems serving hundreds of millions of users. You'll mentor and technically enable the broader User Platform engineering team, raising the bar on system design, technical communication, and IAM best practices across a team of strong senior and staff engineers. You'll represent User Platform's technical strategy at the executive and cross-group level, telling the right story to motivate adoption and alignment across the business. User Platform at Canva are a platform team, responsible for the AuthZ/N infrastructure that serves as a backbone to Canva Products. User Platform own the identity, authentication, authorisation, user profile, and account systems that connect hundreds of millions of users to the tools they love — and that every product team at Canva depends on to function. Our work directly enables Canva's ambition to become a secure, AI-native company at a billion-user scale: from enforcing bounded, auditable access for agentic AI workflows, to powering seamless product onboarding for acquisitions and new product lines. As a Principal Engineer for User Platform, you'll take on one of the most strategically important technical leadership roles at Canva. You'll be the senior technical owner for our most complex, cross-cutting programmes: migrating thousands of access checks into a declarative authorisation platform, decomposing a monolithic profile service that sits at the heart of Canva's reliability & is involved multiple times in every request, and evolving our tightly-coupled authentication systems into a pluggable platform that any product team can extend. Your work spans User Platform, API Platform, Admin Experience, Security, and the entire product engineering organisation — you'll need to operate credibly at every level, from deep system design to executive communication. This is a multiplier role: your architectural decisions, technical influence, and ability to drive adoption across a large engineering organisation will directly shape how fast Canva can move as we scale to a billion users. If you've spent time in your career solving hard Identity & Access Management problems at scale, and you're ready to apply that expertise to one of the world's most-used creative platforms, this role was made for you.

Requirements

• Deep expertise in Identity & Access Management at scale: experience designing and operating Zanzibar-style authorisation systems (e.g. SpiceDB, Google Zanzibar, OPA), zero-trust identity architectures, and large-scale authentication platforms.
• Proven track record of driving platform adoption across large engineering organisations (300+ engineering teams), including technical communication, stakeholder alignment, and change management at scale.
• Strong system architecture and technical leadership skills, with experience making high-stakes trade-offs for critical, high-availability infrastructure.
• Experience decomposing and evolving monolithic services in production, with a track record of improving reliability without disrupting dependents.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor and elevate senior engineers, and to represent complex technical decisions credibly to executive audiences.
• Deep, hard-won expertise in Identity & Access Management at scale — someone who has built or significantly evolved Zanzibar-style authorisation systems, zero-trust identity architectures, or large-scale authentication platforms in production.
• Understand that platform work at this level is as much about influence and adoption as it is about technical correctness: you know how to drive widespread change across large engineering organisations, and you can make complex IAM concepts legible and compelling to engineers and executives alike.
• Combine deep hands-on technical ability with the strategic seniority to operate as a true principal across multiple groups, and you're energised by the challenge of working at the intersection of security, reliability, and developer experience.
• Want to work on problems that matter — systems that will power the next billion Canva users.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical direction for User Platform's most complex cross-cutting programmes — Centralised Permissions & AuthZ, Profile Decomposition, and Authentication Platform — setting the architectural strategy and driving delivery across teams.
• Serve as the platform's principal-level authority across Identity & Access Management, providing credible technical leadership to Security, API Platform, Admin Experience, and product engineering simultaneously.
• Architect and oversee the migration of 3,000+ access checks into a structurally-enforced authorisation platform (SpiceDB/Zanzibar-style), designing the adoption patterns and microsyncs infrastructure that makes this tractable at Canva's scale.
• Make high-stakes technical trade-offs for critical infrastructure — including profile service decomposition and authentication pluggability — balancing reliability, velocity, and security for systems serving hundreds of millions of users.
• Mentor and technically enable the broader User Platform engineering team, raising the bar on system design, technical communication, and IAM best practices across a team of strong senior and staff engineers.
• Represent User Platform's technical strategy at the executive and cross-group level, telling the right story to motivate adoption and alignment across the business.
• Take on one of the most strategically important technical leadership roles at Canva.
• Be the senior technical owner for our most complex, cross-cutting programmes: migrating thousands of access checks into a declarative authorisation platform, decomposing a monolithic profile service that sits at the heart of Canva's reliability & is involved multiple times in every request, and evolving our tightly-coupled authentication systems into a pluggable platform that any product team can extend.
• Operate credibly at every level, from deep system design to executive communication.

Benefits

• Equity packages — we want our success to be yours too
• Inclusive parental leave policies supporting all parents & carers
• An annual Vibe & Thrive allowance supporting wellbeing, social connection, and office setup
• Flexible leave options empowering you to recharge and thrive

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: No Education Listed