Senior Frontend Engineer - Design Editing Accessibility

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 Sydney campus is uniquely Canva - an extension of our Surry Hills neighbourhood. It’s a thoughtfully designed space with plenty of room to collaborate, focus, and connect.

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. 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.

At the moment, this role is focused on:

• Designing and building accessible interactions in the Editor, including focus management, keyboard navigation, live regions, and the ARIA roles and states that accurately reflect what the product is doing. This is hands-on engineering work that requires understanding both the Editor's component architecture and how assistive technologies interpret it.
• Using screen readers as a daily development tool to test, debug, and validate your work. You should be familiar with the differences between VoiceOver, NVDA and JAWS in practice, not just in theory, including where they diverge from each other and where real world behaviour differs from the spec.
• Collaborating with engineers across the Editing Group to help them build accessible features from the start. This includes reviewing designs and pull requests, providing technical guidance, and working with teams to identify and resolve accessibility issues before they ship.
• Identifying systemic accessibility gaps in the Editor and developing solutions that address the underlying cause rather than patching individual instances. When the same class of problem keeps appearing, the right answer is usually an architectural one.

You're probably a match if:

• You have solid commercial experience building accessible web applications, with a good understanding of WCAG in practice rather than just on paper. You've shipped to the standard and you know where judgment calls come up.
• You have hands-on experience developing with screen readers. You should understand how VoiceOver, NVDA and JAWS behave technically, including their quirks and inconsistencies, and be comfortable debugging assistive technology interactions as part of your normal workflow.
• You can work effectively in a large, interconnected frontend codebase. You understand how components, state, and rendering interact, and you approach accessibility as something that needs to be designed into a system rather than applied to it.
• You have strong proficiency in TypeScript and React and are comfortable reasoning about component structure and accessibility together.
• You communicate clearly across disciplines. You can explain the technical behaviour of a screen reader to an engineer who hasn't used one, and explain the constraints of a complex component to a designer who's trying to get accessibility right. Both directions matter in this role.

It would be a plus if:

• You have experience with WAI-ARIA authoring patterns for complex widgets such as trees, grids, drag-and-drop interactions and dialogs. 
• You have experience building accessibility for complex interactions like streaming or real-time UI accessibility, HTML5 canvas, data visualisation, spreadsheets, WYSIWYG, etc. 
• You are familiar with browser and native accessibility APIs, including the accessibility tree and platform-specific behaviours. 
• You have experience building accessibility features utilising AI.
• You have experience with mobile accessibility, including React Native. 
• You have prior experience working alongside dedicated accessibility specialists, assistive technology users, or user researchers focused on accessibility. 

About the team

The Editing Accessibility team sits within the Design Experience supergroup, inside the Editing Group. We want to be the most accessible design tool in the world—and with strong, sustained internal support from leadership and core product teams, our Accessibility Teams are set to achieve this mission.

The challenge we're taking on has two sides. The first is making sure everyone can use Canva's Editor, including people who rely on screen readers and other assistive technology. Imagine being able to confidently use a design tool to create a beautiful design without seeing it. The second is ensuring that what people create in Canva is accessible by default, so designs work for everyone who encounters them. Both dimensions sit at the cutting edge of frontend engineering in modern web applications.

We work closely with engineers, designers, and product managers across the Editing Group, which means clear communication and the ability to earn trust across disciplines is just as important as technical depth.

We're looking for a frontend engineer who can work in the Editor's architecture and design accessibility into complex, interconnected systems. The Canva Editor has a large surface area with many interacting components, so getting accessibility right requires understanding how things fit together before deciding where and how to make changes. Many of the problems this team works on don't have established answers. Making live collaborative editing accessible, or building screen reader support for rich text editing in a canvas-based environment involves working through challenges that don't have an obvious playbook. It often requires creative thinking when the spec doesn't quite cover the situation you're in.

A significant part of this role involves using screen readers as a development tool, not just a validation step, to understand how the Editor communicates with users and where that breaks down. We also work directly with assistive technology users throughout the design and development process, so co-designing solutions with the people who will actually use them is part of how we work.

You'll also spend a meaningful portion of your time working across the Editing Group, helping other teams understand what accessible implementation looks like in practice and reviewing their work as they build new features.

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 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.