Her career began playing various stage roles whilst studying at the Victorian College of the Arts.
These appearances continued over a decade whilst Rukavina worked in guest roles in various Australian television series.
[2] From 2010 onwards, Rukavina gained work with Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC), playing Tituba in the 2013 production of The Crucible.
[5] In 2014, she played Leila in MTC's production of Yellow Moon[6] Rukavina discovered her love for "non-naturalistic theatre" via the role.
[13][14] In the intervening time Rukavina gained guest roles in episodes of Offspring (2013), It's a Date (2014), Wentworth (2015), Newton's Law and Get Krack!n (both 2017).
During different shows she played the characters Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger, Minerva McGonagall, Dolores Umbridge and Rolanda Hooch.
[16] On 22 June 2023, it was announced that Rukavina had joined the regular cast of the soap opera Neighbours, playing Remi Varga-Murphy.
Rukavina was "thrilled" to join Neighbours because they were leading in "showcasing diverse and real representations of Australian families, not in a tokenistic way.
Rukavina worked sixteen hour days, consisting of filming at Neighbours and performing eight stage shows a week.