Staff Front End Engineer – Portable Platform

Canva

Staff Front End Engineer focused on building the frontend architecture for Canva's Portable Platform. Leading the transition of React Web to React Native while upskilling engineers.

Posted 6/30/2026full-timeRemote • 🇦🇺 AustraliaLeadWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AndroidiOSReactReact Native

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Build the frontend layer of the Portable Platform: Design and ship the frontend architecture that lets React engineers write once and run across web and React Native. The abstraction has to be clean enough that product engineers never have to think about which runtime they’re targeting.
Lead the React Web to React Native transition: Navigate the extraction from a pure React Web codebase to React Web plus React Native. Make the transition clean. The decisions made here shape how Canva’s frontend codebase evolves for years.
Own the web implementations of common abstractions: Build the web side of shared Portable Platform components — the pieces that work consistently across iOS, Android, and browser. You own the web runtime slice of that contract.
Support the upskilling of frontend engineers: Six hundred-plus frontend engineers are moving from a world where they only had to think about web. Help them understand the new mental model — through code standards, documentation, design reviews, and direct collaboration.
Bring SSR and React Server Components into the picture: Server-side rendering and RSC are part of this story — particularly how a backend wires up to the portable frontend layer. This isn’t the headline, but it matters, and you’ll need to reason about it well.
Stay hands-on: Staff engineers at Canva ship code. You’ll be in the codebase, writing design docs, committing to production. The architecture work and the engineering work aren’t separate here.

Requirements

What you’ll need

Experience React at depth: You understand how React is built, reconciliation, the rendering model, the server component model. You’ve made decisions below the framework’s surface.
Performance in depth: You’ve driven measurable gains on a complex frontend product and know how to distinguish a real win from a misleading benchmark.
Portable or cross-platform experience: You’ve worked on a codebase that runs across more than one runtime and understand the trade-offs of abstracting at the component layer.
React Native mental model: You don’t need to be a mobile expert, but you understand how React Native differs from React Web and how engineers need to think differently when targeting both runtimes.
Cross-team influence: You’ve shipped something that changed how more than one team builds, through documentation, prototypes, and direct conversation.
Hands-on: Writing code day-to-day. Recent commits, recent design docs, recent reviews.
AI fluency: You’ve used AI tooling in real engineering work and have a view on what it changes for frontend development.
Nice to have: SSR and React Server Components: Familiarity with server-side rendering and RSC patterns — how a backend wires up to a React frontend, and where this fits in the Portable Platform story.
React Native experience: Hands-on React Native work, even at a surface level. If you’ve shipped something in React Native, that’s a genuine plus.
Open-source contributions: React, React Native, or the broader frontend ecosystem.
Design system or component library depth: Experience building shared component abstractions that other engineers consume, especially abstractions that need to work across different rendering environments.

Benefits

Comp & perks

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

ATS Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

ReactReact NativeServer-Side RenderingComponent AbstractionFrontend ArchitecturePerformance MetricsCode StandardsDesign DocumentationPrototypingOpen-Source Contributions

Soft Skills

Cross-Team InfluenceCollaborationMentoring