Legal Counsel

Join the team redefining how the world experiences design.

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About the Group/Team

Canva is on a mission to empower the world to design, and the Canva Legal team plays a huge role in enabling that mission. We’re focused on protecting and supporting the growth of Canva by being strategic partners to our stakeholders across the company, helping them to achieve their goals.

That’s why when you join our Legal team, you’ll work on matters that matter. Most importantly, you’ll see the impact of your work and your contribution will be felt by Canvanauts and our growing community of 265,000,000 users across the world.

So pull up a chair. This is Legal like you’ve never experienced before.

 

We’re looking for a new Head of Intellectual Property & Litigation to lead our incredible team. The IP & Litigation team is responsible for protecting and defending Canva’s valuable IP and delivering strategic legal advice that empowers Canvanauts to create and innovate with confidence. They build and manage Canva’s global IP portfolios, provide strategic, risk-aware IP advice, acquire and license creative content, software and AI technologies, and manage and resolve litigation and disputes across the globe.

This is a leadership role at its core - your biggest impact will come through setting the strategic direction for the group, and coaching a talented team of specialists to deliver exceptional work. You’ll sit on the Legal Leadership team alongside the heads of Commercial, Corporate, Employment, Legal Operations, Product & Privacy and Public Policy & Government Affairs, and collaborate closely with them, as well as stakeholders in the product, engineering and marketing teams we partner with across Canva.

You’ll be joining a dynamic, collaborative team that is passionate about enabling Canva's mission to empower the world to design.

What you’ll do:

• Lead and coach a high-performing global team of IP and litigation specialists

• Set the vision and strategy for how Canva protects and leverages IP, and manages disputes and litigation* globally

• Provide strategic guidance to Canva leadership on IP and litigation-related matters, ensuring Canva's interests are protected pragmatically and proportionately

• Ensure effective cross-functional collaboration between IP & Litigation and other functions in relation to product launches, M&A and other projects

• Foster a high-performance collaborative culture, including through work distribution, growth & development and team well-being, as well as owning headcount planning and resourcing decisions

• Drive team connection and culture through team rituals including all-hands, cross-specialty engagement and our annual global Legal Summit

• Champion Canva’s AI Native ways of working, actively using and encouraging AI tools to streamline workflows

• Manage intellectual property and litigation budgets and outside counsel engagement

• Monitor industry trends, emerging technologies and legal developments, translating these into clear, practical recommendations for Canva

*Excluding employment matters

What we're looking for:

• Leadership & Teamwork: This team operates with a high degree of autonomy and mutual trust. We’re looking for a leader who thrives in collaborative, low-ego environments. You should see your role as empowering the team, not directing from the top-down.

• Cross-functional IP breadth: You should bring a working fluency across the full spectrum of IP disciplines - copyright, patents, trademarks, litigation and technology/content licensing and partnership transactions. Deep specialisation in one or more of these areas is valued, but the more important thing is to be able to navigate across all of these areas with confidence, ask the right questions, and make sound strategic decisions.

• Industry context: The IP landscape Canva operates in is evolving rapidly. The ideal candidate should have meaningful experience advising tech companies. They should be comfortable with the pace and ambiguity that comes with emerging tech and understand how IP strategy intersects with product development.

• Comfort with and fluency in AI tools - Canva Legal is on a mission to become an AI Native Legal Team. It’s important that you actively use AI in your current role and have comfort and strong fluency in AI tools, to help us drive AI adoption and integration into our practices.