Staff Data Scientist – Growth

Role Overview

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Requirements

• 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.

Tech Stack

• Python
• SQL

Benefits

• 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