Canva
Design
PrincipalPartnerEngineer
“Principal Partner Engineer at Canva. Skills: Partner engineering, Platform engineering, AI platform stack. Drive decisions and alignment across Partners and Canva engineering. Set technical direction for Canva's external platform surface”
Industry & Context.
Generate the realistic option set; Drive it to a decision; Contribute to that direction; Validate proposed solutions; Drive decisions; Turn ambiguous partner signal into crisp engineering decisions
Work on Pacific Time hours
What They're Looking For.
Must Have
10+ years of software engineering experience, Roles operating at the seam between partner engineering, platform engineering, and product, Built developer platforms, Shipped code in production on platforms used by external developers, Move fluidly between a product roadmap conversation, a system design discussion, and a partner negotiation, Bring a prototype or sample code to a hard conversation, Technically deep on the modern AI platform stack, Communicate directly, Resolve misalignments by writing clearly, Worked inside product stacks that are heterogeneous and move fast, Orient yourself quickly in a codebase you didn't write, Raise the technical bar across Ecosystem engineering by sharing knowledge, feedback and bringing others into partner facing wins
Nice to Have
Hands-on experience shipping or integrating with MCP (Anthropic, OpenAI, Copilot, or Gemini flavours), TypeScript, Comfortable across front-end (React) and server-side JavaScript, Ability to read a Java backend, Track record of turning ambiguous partner signal into crisp engineering decisions that Product and Engineering acted on
What You'll Do.
Drive decisions and alignment across Partners and Canva engineering
Set technical direction for Canva's external platform surface
Ground partner conversations in working code
Validate proposed solutions against Canva's real architecture
Sketch what a change could look like in code
Drive product-line engineering across external platform surfaces
Carry the platform direction outward early
Shape strategic partner and customer engagements
Lead the technical relationship end-to-end
Move between product-roadmap discussion
and partnership alignment call
How You'll Work.
Team & Collaboration
Collaborate daily with Canva's engineering teams; Drive decisions and alignment across Partners and Canva engineering; Work across all external platform surfaces; Sit inside Ecosystem engineering leadership; Works closely with the Ecosystem leadership team; Partners directly with our Head of Partnerships
Communication Scope
Translate without losing precision; Communicate directly; Writing clearly; Sharing knowledge; Feedback
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