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Canva is seeking a Head of Commercial Legal to lead its global Commercial Legal team. The Commercial Legal function is responsible for empowering Canva's scalable growth through strategic legal and operational guidance, structuring and negotiating customer, partner, and supplier agreements, and supporting go-to-market efforts, new products, and commercial initiatives.
In this role, you will lead and coach a high-performing global Commercial Legal team, setting vision and strategy for how the function enables Canva's growth while managing commercial risk. You'll provide strategic guidance to Canva leadership on material commercial, customer, partner, and supplier matters, and partner closely with Sales, Procurement, Finance, Product, and other teams to support launches, new business models, and strategic initiatives.
Key responsibilities include designing scalable commercial legal processes, playbooks, templates, and ways of working that help Canva move quickly and consistently; fostering a high-performance, collaborative culture through thoughtful work distribution, growth and development, team wellbeing, and resourcing decisions; driving team connection and culture through team rituals and engagement; championing Canva's AI Native ways of working by actively using and encouraging AI tools to streamline workflows; managing Commercial Legal budgets and outside counsel engagement; and monitoring market developments, emerging technologies, and legal trends to inform practical recommendations.
Canva offers flexibility in how and where you work, with a flagship office in Sydney and a US hub in San Francisco. The company emphasizes collaborative environments, autonomous teamwork, and mutual trust. Interviews are conducted virtually.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Leadership & teamwork: Experience managing teams across different timezones; ability to thrive in collaborative environments with high autonomy and mutual trust
- Commercial breadth and judgment: Strong experience advising on a broad range of commercial matters including customer, partner, supplier, and technology transactions; ability to navigate complex commercial issues, ask the right questions, and make practical decisions
- Strategic business partnering: Ability to serve as a trusted adviser to senior business leaders; comfort balancing legal risk with commercial opportunity; clear communication to both legal and non-legal stakeholders
- Industry context: Experience advising technology companies; understanding of how legal considerations intersect with product development and go-to-market strategy; comfort operating amid ambiguity and change
- Building for scale: Experience improving legal processes, using technology effectively, and building a function that supports a growing global company without creating unnecessary friction
- AI fluency: Comfort with and fluency in AI tools; commitment to helping Canva Legal become an AI Native Legal Team
