01. Getting to know you
Chat with a Canva recruiter and find out where you fit into the Canva story.
Hiring is a two way conversation – you’re interviewing us as well. Throughout the process, you’ll get a real insight into the kind of work you’ll be doing at Canva. Our first tip for applicants: be yourself! Canva celebrates individuality and all the diverse talents and experiences that people bring to our team.
02. Show us what you can do
A sample work challenge or online pair coding session to show us how awesome you are.
03. Final interview
Meet the team, solve some interesting tasks and see how we’d all work together.
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01. Getting to know you
So, you’ve applied online or we’ve reached out to you. What’s the next step? You can expect an email from a Canva recruiter, asking you to book in an interview. We’ll have a chat about your aspirations and experience, and also talk more about the role and Canva’s culture.
We’ll also work through a few short questions to assess your knowledge of the role you’re applying for, and how you approach certain problems. This is your chance to ask questions too, so ask as many as you’d like.
If you believe that you and Canva can achieve great things together, that’s the first job requirement fulfilled.
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02. Show us what you can do
Different people work in different ways, so this step of the process is designed to fit around your working style and lifestyle. You’ll get a challenge to complete in your own time, or if you’re an engineer you can choose a pair programming session instead. We want to see you at your best.
The challenge differs for each role, and it’s designed to be realistic and interesting. You’ll get an insight into the kind of work you’ll be doing at Canva—no generic brain teasers or trick questions here.
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03. Final interview
For your final interviews with Canva, you’ll get to meet the people you’ll hopefully be working closest with. We’re aiming to replicate the Canva working environment, so you’ll be diving in with team members and tackling tasks related to your role. We want to get a sense for how we’d work together, so explaining your thinking and asking questions are a key part of the session.
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04. Decision
You’ll hear back from us within 48 hours. Good luck!
We’re making a decision, but we know that you are too. Here’s some more reasons to join, just in case you’re still asking yourself “Why Canva”? Remember, we’re not just looking for people who will “fit in”—we want people who will bring new and exciting things to our culture.
FAQs
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Can I apply for a job that isn’t advertised?
If you can see an “expression of interest” role on our careers portal that matches your skillset, feel free to send us an application there. Otherwise, if you can see a role that’s closely related to what you do, you can apply through that route. Just let us know that you have similar skills that we might be interested in hiring for. We have a team of recruiters reviewing everything, so we’ll read your application and see if we have work that fits your experience and interests. We may not reach out straight away, but we’ll let you know as soon as there’s something suitable.
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Any advice for making a great application?
Whether it’s for your application, interviews or challenge, it always helps to do a little research. Find some articles about Canva, check out our mission and values, dig a little deeper into our history and play around with the product (it’s free and amazing—if we say so ourselves).
Include a cover letter that lets us know why you’d like to work at Canva. Tell us about what makes you unique, and highlight any passion projects you’ve done in your field.
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What can I do to prepare for engineering interviews?
The first interview with a recruiter will involve a few technical questions, but it’s not something we expect you to prepare for. They will be short, scenario-based questions that relate to the daily work you’ll be doing.
The final interviews will require writing working code, not just pseudocode — Java for backend and Android, JS for frontend, and Swift for iOS. We often recommend the books ‘You Don’t Know JS’ by Kyle Simpson (available on GitHub), and ‘Effective Java’.
Brush up on your computer science principles, keeping in mind performance, concurrency, scalability and resiliency. Think about how you would solve problems on a large scale and high performance web platform, used by millions around the world.
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What should I bring to the final interview?
- Your laptop (don’t forget your charger!)
- Your challenge submission if you made one.
- We’re not a formal bunch here at Canva. There’s no need to wear anything too smart!
If you’re doing an engineering interview:
- Have your development environment ready to go (if you did a challenge, please test to make sure your code is working properly)
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Any tips for the final interview?
- Communication is key. Let us know your thinking while you complete tasks and consider questions. If you don’t know an answer completely, be sure to demonstrate what you do know and explain where you would go to find the rest of the answer.
- Qualify answers and ask questions. Don't be afraid to follow up an answer with: "Does that answer your question?" If we come back with a "not quite", you get another bite of the apple.
- Interviews can take a little while - don’t hesitate to ask for extra glasses of water or anything else you’d like! We want to make the process as fun as possible, not an inquisition.
Thoughts from our team
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I definitely felt cared for during the recruitment process. The communications and feedback throughout were great, people were encouraging and it felt like they were on the journey with me.
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As an engineer, it was the interview process that really drew me in. Even the interview questions taught me a lot of things, so I realised that working at this company was going to teach me a lot and really move my skills forward.
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The interview confirmed what I had hoped, that the team was really smart and passionate about what they were building. During the interview they pushed me to improve my code and guided me to better solutions. To top it off, I interviewed over lunchtime and the food and the whole atmosphere was great!
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During the interview you can Google things if you’re not sure about them, so don’t worry about getting the syntax perfectly correct. Let the interviewers know your thinking as you’re working on the problem, so they can give you tips. The way you approach the problem is more important than finishing everything within the timeframe.
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The interview process gave me a really good idea of the actual tasks I’d be doing at Canva, and the people I’d be working with. By the end I felt sure that Canva was the right fit for me, and I was the right fit for Canva.
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Sometimes an interview process doesn’t allow you to display your full skill set, but this one was different. I found the take-home challenge much more holistic than the typical case study. I had a lot of freedom to come up with ideas outside the usual tactics, just like I do now in my job.
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Take-home challenges are often an indication of how an organisation issues tasks day to day. Challenges that are vague or essentially free work are definitely a red flag. Canva’s design challenge was well-framed, data-informed and user-centred, which gave me confidence that the role was a good fit for me.
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I definitely felt cared for during the recruitment process. The communications and feedback throughout were great, people were encouraging and it felt like they were on the journey with me.
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As an engineer, it was the interview process that really drew me in. Even the interview questions taught me a lot of things, so I realised that working at this company was going to teach me a lot and really move my skills forward.
-
The interview confirmed what I had hoped, that the team was really smart and passionate about what they were building. During the interview they pushed me to improve my code and guided me to better solutions. To top it off, I interviewed over lunchtime and the food and the whole atmosphere was great!
-
During the interview you can Google things if you’re not sure about them, so don’t worry about getting the syntax perfectly correct. Let the interviewers know your thinking as you’re working on the problem, so they can give you tips. The way you approach the problem is more important than finishing everything within the timeframe.
-
The interview process gave me a really good idea of the actual tasks I’d be doing at Canva, and the people I’d be working with. By the end I felt sure that Canva was the right fit for me, and I was the right fit for Canva.
-
Sometimes an interview process doesn’t allow you to display your full skill set, but this one was different. I found the take-home challenge much more holistic than the typical case study. I had a lot of freedom to come up with ideas outside the usual tactics, just like I do now in my job.
-
Take-home challenges are often an indication of how an organisation issues tasks day to day. Challenges that are vague or essentially free work are definitely a red flag. Canva’s design challenge was well-framed, data-informed and user-centred, which gave me confidence that the role was a good fit for me.