Updating Results

Canva

4.3
  • 1,000 - 50,000 employees

Rifhad Mahbub

Study something you actually enjoy and you can see yourself doing for the long haul.

What's your job about?

Canva’s goal is to empower anyone to design anything on any device. I come in on the device bit, specializing in Android.

Recently I’ve been working on deeplinks and notifications and seeing how it all comes together and works. It’s been a great learning experience. I’ve also been working on a couple of exciting projects with our global team.

The interesting thing is I was given work in an area I initially knew extremely little about, but I’ve quickly been put into a position where I now feel like I’m contacted by other teams when they have issues in those areas. This makes me feel like a very valuable member of the team.

What's your background?

I mainly grew up here in Sydney, but I lived in Melbourne when I was a toddler. I was born in Bangladesh.

I started uni with a Civil Engineering course (influenced by my parents suggesting it, friends doing it, etc.). I quickly found that it wasn’t really my thing, and the only time I ever enjoyed it was during this one programming assignment we had to do for a computer-related subject. However, this didn’t really click until a couple of years after. That’s when I finally decided to change my course to Software Engineering. I suddenly started doing much better and having more fun as well.

I was offered an internship at Canva after applying during my third year in uni. I think the key thing that initially set me apart was I had experience working with Android already, which is somewhat of a niche skill as a university student. After my internship ended, I was offered a full-time graduate position at Canva.

Could someone with a different background do your job?

Absolutely - I think anyone who is logic-oriented and willing to learn can do my job! Being able to communicate with others is pretty important as well.

What's the coolest thing about your job?

What I love most about working at Canva is a relaxed and casual atmosphere. It really feels like I’m working on stuff with friends most of the time. Sometimes I’ll work on little things, like bug fixes, implementing small changes, or helping others get their features working with Android. Other times I’ll be working on bigger features. Switching between the two is a good way to balance knowledge of the project as a whole and specialization in your own thing.

What are the limitations of your job?

I think an important limiting factor is that it can be quite easy to zone out or mentally get lost in work. Having a strong and genuine interest in software is really important.

3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...

  1. Study something you actually enjoy and you can see yourself doing for the long haul.
  2. Don’t stress too much about university marks or performance.
  3. Try to get exposure to unique external projects that are partnered with your university. These kinds of things will set you apart from everyone else!