Staff Data Scientist - Growth at Canva

Join the team redefining how the world experiences design. 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 a 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 a Staff Data Scientist in the Growth Supergroup, you’ll play a key role in shaping how Canva measures, optimises, and accelerates progress toward our foundational goals. You’ll partner closely with cross-functional teams to unlock insights, drive experimentation, and influence strategic decisions at scale. Canva seeks to enhance its understanding of commercial metrics by designing causal models that link input metrics- like feature exposure and engagement - to revenue and Monthly Active Users (MAU). This role will validate relationships within Canva's Metrics Tree, quantifying their impact and influencing success definitions. As a key analytical resource for Monthly Business Reviews and a partner to leadership, your insights will directly shape company strategy and growth actions. At the moment, this role is focused on: • Design and build causal models that quantify the relationships between input metrics (feature exposure, adoption, engagement, etc.) and component metrics to Canva's foundational goals (paid upgrades, user retention, user acquisition, etc.) — establishing which hypothesised links hold up and how strong they are. • Partner with embedded data science and analytics teams to design experiments and/or analytical approaches that test causal hypotheses, adapting methodology to the wide variety of contexts across Canva (short-run A/B tests, long-term holdouts, quasi-experimental methods where randomisation isn't feasible). • Own the causal layer of Canva's Metrics Tree — validating and quantifying the links between team-level input metrics and company-level outcomes, and feeding findings back into how teams set targets and define success. Over time, extend this framework to cover the UCM funnel as it matures. • Act as the analytical lead for Monthly Business Reviews in partnership with FGP Ops — onboarding team metrics, sense-checking what's being tracked, owning the MBR frontend in Airtable, and ensuring the MBR surfaces the right signals to leadership. • Partner with Analytics Engineering to embed validated metrics and causal findings into the Semantic Layer — enabling dimensional cuts, and the tooling teams need to track and investigate key metrics. • Drive a minimum standard of accountability and ownership on key output metrics across the organisation — partnering with teams in a consultative capacity to define data artefacts, SLAs, and alerting frameworks that ensure metrics are actively monitored and owned, without taking direct ownership of the metrics themselves. • Serve as a key analytical partner to leadership — stress-testing strategic assumptions, supporting pricing and commercial modelling, and providing analytical firepower on high-stakes decisions. • Develop and communicate clear, defensible points of view on what drives user value at Canva — both free and paid — and translate those into actionable recommendations for senior stakeholders. • Develop AI-powered tools and agents that amplify your analytical reach — enabling embedded teams to independently replicate and extend causal analysis, metric validation, and commercial modelling approaches without requiring direct involvement on every question. You're probably a match if   • You have deep expertise in causal inference and econometric methods, having worked with approaches like instrumental variables, difference-in-differences, synthetic control, or structural causal models in applied settings, not just academic ones. • You possess strong experimental design skills, with the judgment to recognise when a clean A/B test isn't feasible and the creativity to design credible alternatives. • You are fluent in SQL and Python as daily working tools, not just as skills listed on a CV, and you can build production-quality analytical code, not just notebooks. • You have the ability to transition between deep technical work and strategic communication — you can spend a week building a causal model and then distil it into a clear recommendation for a non-technical executive seamlessly. • You have experience partnering with cross-functional teams (product, growth, commercial) and translating their domain problems into well-defined analytical questions. • You possess a strong commercial instinct, naturally thinking about how analytical findings connect to revenue, pricing, and growth levers, not just statistical significance. • You are comfortable forming and defending a point of view. We don't need someone who presents options — we need someone who lands a recommendation and backs it with evidence. • You are curious about how AI and automation can extend analytical capability, excited about building tools that scale your impact beyond what you can personally touch. About the team The mission of the ‘Foundational Goals Performance’ team is to enhance overall commercial measurement results across Canva, ensuring a consistent path to achieving our growth targets. This challenge lies at the heart of Canva's identity, transforming our approach to product investments, fostering collaboration around growth, and equipping teams with the appropriate tools and metrics to facilitate these discussions. With this objective in mind, the team naturally collaborates across the entire organisation to drive Canva’s progress forward as a unified entity. 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.