Leadership Operations Partner (Chief of Staff to Country Manager)

Join the team redefining how the world experiences design.

Kamusta, 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 campus is in Sydney, Australia, but with many of our Canvanauts calling the Philippines home, our office in Manila is a buzzing place. Whether your role needs you in the office, at home or a bit of both, we've created an environment that truly empowers you to thrive.

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. We move fast here at Canva, and this role will certainly keep you on your toes. We are looking for someone super-efficient, who loves nothing more than to anticipate needs before they arise and loves to get stuff done. We’d love to work with you if you’re great at prioritizing, juggling projects (and moving them rapidly along), working with diverse stakeholders and teams, and keeping calm under pressure.

This Philippines is a campus and team that has grown to 900 team members over the last few years, becoming an increasingly complex and dynamic group. Working in this space means managing a vast array of ever-shifting priorities and challenges, including:

• Coordinating across multiple teams (both global and local) to achieve country and company wide goals
• Navigating chaos to clarity as you lead specific country goals yourself
• Forecasting, planning and managing significant budgets that enable goals across team, market, and operations to be achieved efficiently
• Collaborating with established and newly formed teams as we evolve existing groups and scale up new ones
• Balancing immediate tactical needs with longer-term strategies to ensure we’re driving impactful results today while building a foundation for scalable, sustainable growth in the future

By it’s very nature, the Leadership Ops Partner role evolves as the business evolves. Anyone coming into this role should be prepared to work in an evolving environment, comfortable working with some level of ambiguity and be prepared to always be juggling multiple competing priorities. At the moment, this role is focused on:

• Strategic Partner: Act as a key partner to the Country Manager, providing strategic input, driving progress, making recommendations, and acting as a representative in meetings to steer the team forward. This means being able to expand their support to other PH Country Leads and teams.
• Driving Country Performance: Driving the country performance by spotting opportunities and designing an elevated Future State, while aligning with Canva’s global strategy, connecting local needs with broader company goals and building strong relationships between the PH team and global leadership.
• Goal Ownership and Problem Solving: Take responsibility for key country goals and initiatives by navigating complexity, seeing it through, collaborating well with others, and communicating effectively.
• Prioritization and Triaging: Act as the primary gateway for requests and priorities, ensuring urgent tasks are handled efficiently and promptly. This ensures the Country Manager and Country Operations team’s time are focused on the most impactful areas and leveraging on each Canvanaut’s strengths.
• Project Management and Execution: Proactively spot opportunities, drive key initiatives, manage cross-functional projects, and collaborate with stakeholders across different parts of Canva to solve complex challenges. You have an innate desire to focus on the little things without losing sight of the bigger picture.
• Day-to-Day Operations: Work closely with the Admin Business Partner to manage the Country Manager’s calendar, meetings, and day-to-day operations, ensuring smooth workflows and effective use of time in relation to the bigger picture of country and company goals.
• Coaching and Team Development: Lead and coach the Country Operations team, fostering a high-performing, growth-oriented culture that aligns with Canva’s goals.
• Review and Feedback: Take ownership of preliminary reviews, revisions, and feedback on key documents, communications, strategy, and budget requests, ensuring high-quality output from the team.
• Canva Values and Collaboration: Embody Canva’s values by fostering clear, kind communication and collaborating effectively with stakeholders, always seeking opportunities to add value and drive impact.
• Be a Real People Person: You’ll build strong relationships with key stakeholders within the company, this will be critical to ensuring that there is the right two-way visibility between the Philippines team and the business.

You're probably a match if:

• You have 7+ years of experience leading strategy, planning or operations within the HR/People, Strategy and Business spaces. You’re ideally someone who has exposure to working in these fields and has strong operations experience and able to run processes at pace and scale, that span multiple markets, across multiple regions.
• You’re truly self-motivated with a desire to constantly learn, develop and grow in the role and driven to turn chaos rapidly to clarity, and then communicate it clearly. You truly champion the value of Making Complex Things Simple.
• You’re someone with a strong and demonstrated bias for action, constantly striving to get things done, and move complex and critical initiatives forward, often navigating the new and unknown. 
• You have great visual communication and design skills (Canva’s made that bit easy!).
• You’re a real people person - someone who thrives on communicating cross-functionally, across multiple business areas and levels - managing complex projects with clear, succinct and targeted comms to engage multiple audiences and drive solutions forward.

About the team

This opportunity sits within the People Supergroup and will be a partner to our Country Manager to extend their reach and capacity. The Leadership Operations role will be integral in supporting Canva’s Country Manager, Country Leads and Teams, and our broader Canva team to perform at their very best, providing focussed strategic direction on projects and creating spaces to proactively solve business challenges. 

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.