Staff Software Engineer - User Platform (Java)
HybridSydney, New South Wales, Australia
Job Summary
Design and own core components of Canva's authorization and access control systems, including the centralised, SpiceDB-backed platform. Help product teams adopt these capabilities by designing patterns, tooling, and integrations for high-availability infrastructure serving hundreds of millions of users. Make sound technical trade-offs for critical systems and partner across Security, API Platform, and product engineering to align on requirements. Shape the platform's direction regarding subject/identity models and agentic AI workflows while mentoring engineers on system design and IAM best practices. This Staff Software Engineer role is based in Sydney with a hybrid work arrangement.
Required Qualifications
- Direct experience with Identity & Access Management at scale — designing and operating authorization and access control systems (RBAC / ReBAC / ABAC, or Zanzibar-style systems such as SpiceDB) in production
- Strong backend engineering — building and running high-performance, high-availability services (Java a plus), with solid distributed-systems and CS fundamentals
- Strong system design — turning ambiguous, cross-cutting problems into tractable, well-sequenced work
- A track record of driving adoption of platform capabilities across engineering teams, with clear technical communication and stakeholder alignment
- Strong written and verbal communication; collaborative across teams
- This role is based in Sydney, and we're looking for someone who calls it home
- Our hybrid way of working gives you the flexibility to work remotely, and to come together on campus for meaningful in-person collaboration and connection when it matters most
Desired Qualifications
- Java a plus
- Experience with policy languages / authorization engines — OPA, Cedar (or similar)
- Experience with Zanzibar-style authorization systems (SpiceDB, Google Zanzibar)
- Experience evolving large services in production without disrupting dependents
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