Canva culture

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At Canva, we work every day to make a significant positive impact on society. Our mission is to democratize design and empower creativity and visual expression for every person, on every platform.

Since launch in August 2013, our user base has grown exponentially, amassing over 10 million monthly active users in over 120 languages, making us one of the world's fastest-growing technology companies. As of today, we've achieved profitability, and the company is valued over $2.5-billion, which prepares us for the next phase of growth and development.

At Canva, we value the collective strength of diverse individuals who sign up to join our adventure. We are an eclectic group of people, with such different strengths and talents - it feels like there is little we can’t achieve. But at the heart of our diversity lies one universal characteristic that sets Canva apart - we are a team of problem-solvers working together. We want everyone at Canva to feel challenged and inspired to do the best work of their lives. We all play an active role in shaping Canva to be the company where we want to work.

One of our core values at Canva, “Being a force for good” means we are actively working towards a world that isn't just good for a small few, but one that’s good for everyone. We believe deeply that bringing together diversity of thoughts, perspectives and expression is key for building the best product for our equally diverse community. To achieve this, we need to constantly work towards making Canva the best place to work, for everyone.

We ensure that the Canva workspace is setup for you to do your best work and have a great time doing so, with in-house chefs, gym and yoga studio access, breakout areas, and quiet places to retreat and do your best work!

Empowering the world to design!

Software engineering is the core of who we are at Canva. The Canva code base was built to scale from day one. This has allowed for a unique environment where engineers spend most of their time optimizing performance and releasing new features rather than fixing legacy code.

With an adherence to fundamentals and first principles, the team strives to use the most appropriate tools for the tasks at hand, aiming to strike that carefully measured balance between getting things done and long-term maintainability of the code base and supporting infrastructure.

You'll be joining a team of skilled technologists with previous experience at companies such as Google, JetBrains, Yandex, Atlassian, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook; leveraging their knowledge and experience building mass-scale web applications for consumers and businesses alike.

We promote a warm and collaborative work environment by embracing a flat structure where engineers set big goals and are given the tools and support to achieve them. We also invite our engineers to contribute to the direction their peers are taking with proactive pair ups for peer-reviewing of code as well as regular engineering forums for opinions and ideas to be heard. These practices ensure that knowledge is shared and releases are quick and efficient.

Finally - you're probably curious about our technology stack. At a high level, Canva's backend is powered by a set of services (some micro, some not-so-micro) built primarily in Java, hosted on Linux, sitting on AWS. We also sprinkle in some powerful open-source libraries and tools (have a look at finagle), as well as bespoke components to power some of the magic. For the front end, we have just re-written the Canva code base in a React, MobX and Typescript stack. That means you’re working with the cleanest, leanest frontend stack.

Want to experience Canva for yourself?

You can also read more about our engineering culture on https://engineering.canva.com/

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