Payroll Lead, EMEA/Americas

Join the team redefining how the world experiences design.

Hiya, 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
The buzzing Canva London campus features several buildings around beautiful leafy Hoxton Square in Shoreditch. While our global headquarters is in Sydney, Australia, London is our HQ for Europe, with all kinds of teams based here, plus event spaces to gather our team and communities. You'll experience a warm welcome from our Vibe team at front of house, amazing home cooked food from our Head Chef and a variety of workspaces to hang out with your team mates or get solo work done. That said, we trust our Canvanauts to choose the balance that empowers them and their team to achieve their goals and so you have choice in where and how you work.

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. So this will give you the flavour of the type of things you'll be working on when you start, but this will likely evolve.

At the moment, this role is focused on:

• Own end-to-end payroll operations across the EMEA and Americas regions, ensuring accuracy, compliance, and timeliness for a growing number of countries—primarily Austria, Czechia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
• Lead and develop a global payroll team, managing two Payroll Specialists based in London and one in San Francisco.
• Act as the primary subject matter expert for all payroll-related matters in EMEA and the Americas, including expansion support for new countries or Employer of Record (EOR) arrangements.
• Ensure compliance with evolving payroll legislation, tax regulations, and statutory reporting requirements across multiple jurisdictions.
• Identify and drive process optimization and automation opportunities, introducing best practices to improve payroll efficiency, scalability, and accuracy.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with People Operations, Legal, Finance, and other key stakeholders to implement payroll changes, support policy alignment, and maintain a smooth employee experience.
• Produce and interpret regular payroll reports and analytics to inform decision-making, audit readiness, and stakeholder visibility.
• Lead continuous improvement efforts to strengthen payroll operations, enhance data integrity, and evolve reporting capabilities.
• Partner on key systems initiatives, including implementations, upgrades, integrations, and tooling—such as the Workday payroll rollout for the US/UK and timesheet solutions across EMEA.
• Manage and maintain outsourced payroll provider relationships, ensuring accountability, service quality, and compliance.
• Provide guidance on complex payroll issues, resolve escalations efficiently, and deliver a high standard of customer service to internal teams.
• Support payroll audits by maintaining accurate and up-to-date documentation, ensuring strong internal controls and audit readiness.
• Contribute to a collaborative, agile, and high-performing team culture, fostering knowledge sharing, continuous learning, and support in a hyper-growth environment.

You're probably a match if:

• At least 7+ years of payroll experience in EMEA, with specific expertise in handling complex payroll processes and ensuring compliance across multiple countries in EMEA.

• Deep understanding of payroll regulations, statutory reporting, and labor legislation across various EMEA countries. Familiarity with US payroll practices is a plus.

• Skilled in using payroll platforms such as ADP, Workday, or similar systems. Comfortable with process automation, system integration, and vendor management.

• Highly organized with strong attention to detail. Demonstrates a high level of accuracy in payroll calculations, data entry, and reconciliation.

• Strong analytical mindset with creative problem-solving capabilities. Proactively identifies issues, assesses root causes, and implements effective solutions.

• Expertise in managing and analyzing large datasets using advanced formulas, functions, pivot tables, and macros.

• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to work effectively with cross-functional teams, external vendors, and internal stakeholders. Strong stakeholder engagement experience is essential.

• Experience managing and developing high-performing teams, including setting team goals, tracking metrics, and supporting career development.

• Thrives in fast-paced, dynamic environments. Able to manage competing priorities, adapt to changing business needs, and maintain a proactive, solutions-focused mindset.

• Maintains a high level of confidentiality and professionalism in handling sensitive payroll and employee information.

About the team

Canva’s Payroll team is a part of the Finance and Legal Group, based in Australia, and growing teams in the Philippines, EMEA and the United States. We manage payroll for our ever-growing community of Canvanauts worldwide.

As Canva continues to rapidly grow and expand globally, the payroll function faces increased complexity in scaling operations and compliance. We are expanding the team, adding technical expertise and operational skills to help Canva achieve its crazy big goals.

With payroll being one of the most critical functions in Finance, the team plays a significant role in making Canva one of the best places to work. We are dedicated to ensuring that every Canvanaut is paid accurately and on time, providing an excellent employee experience.

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.

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.