About the role
Canva Head of Design Research | SmartRecruiters Google Chrome Microsoft Edge Apple Safari Mozilla Firefox Head of Design Research Full-time Recruitment type: Permanent Job Description 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. We also have a campus in Melbourne and co-working spaces in Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. But you have choice in where and how you work, we trust our Canvanauts to choose the balance that empowers them and their team to achieve their goals. 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: Team Lead - Lead, mentor, and grow the Design Research team—building research capability, fostering psychological safety, and developing consistent standards of excellence across evaluative and generative methods. Future research - Craft and lead a design research strategy that informs product vision, company goals, and long-term opportunities in an AI era. Close the Loop (evaluative) research - Drive streams of work to find and fix user issues across Canva’s product surfaces by identifying and close loops, and to ensure an objectively high quality bar Self-serve research - Enable product teams to confidently conduct their own research through training, templates, and shared frameworks - while maintaining a strong quality bar Sub-specialty lead - Evolve the Design Research sub specialty by strengthening methodologies, elevating craft standards, and integrating AI-assisted techniques that improve speed, quality, and scale. Set and maintain a quality bar for design research - both via hands-on research, and coaching, training, processes, and oversight Autonomy & Decision Making: Sets direction for the group with clarity and confidence, defining priorities and navigating trade-offs across multiple teams, while aligning to strategic direction Lead communications to all relevant company goal stakeholders Drive prioritisation so that this key resource is focused on the key priorities Insight Impact, Measurement and Communication - define and measure research success metrics Define and manage the research tool ecosystem - including AI-enabled platforms that improve insight generation, collaboration, and organisational understanding. You're probably a match if: You're a Seasoned leader with deep expertise across generative, evaluative, and mixed-methods research Motivated by shaping product strategy, elevating research craft, and integrating emerging AI capabilities into meaningful practice AI resesarch native, consistently learning and evolving skills as fast as the technology is unlocking capabilities Skilled leader to ensure