Technical SEO Lead

About the Team

At Canva we create tools that empower the world to design. Our mission is to democratize design and empower creativity for anyone and everyone on every platform. Since launching in August 2013 Canva has grown exponentiallywere one of the worlds fastest-growing startups and the journey has only just begun.

International is becoming Canvas biggest growth driver in 2026 and beyond. To reach our foundational goal of having 1 in 5 internet users use Canva every month were shifting from translating English successes to implementing truly local strategies that resonate with and convert local audiences.

The SEO group spans the globe with keyword researchers technical SEO specialists content specialists copywriters engineers data analysts designers and operations specialists.

As i18n Technical SEO Lead youll sit at the intersection of craft coaching and cross-functional influence. Youll be part of the Logged Out Experience (LOX) Group and the International SEO team embedded within our senior i18n SEO leadership with strong alignment to Central (EN) Technical SEO.

About the Role

You are the owner of i18n technical SEO craft at Canva defining standards building playbooks coaching specialists and advising Country Leads on the technical decisions that shape international growth.

Youll directly manage and coach a globally distributed team of Technical SEO Specialists ensuring consistent high-quality technical execution across all priority markets. Youll serve as the primary technical SEO partner to SEO Country Leads globally the person they turn to when a technical question is too complex too cross-functional or too consequential to handle alone.

Youll also own the relationship between i18n Technical SEO and Canvas Central (EN) Technical SEO team translating global standards into i18n requirements surfacing i18n-specific challenges upstream and ensuring the two functions operate as one coherent technical engine.

Youll be supported by a global network of experts Regional SEO Leads Technical SEOs Product Managers and Content Specialists and have access to Canvas proprietary SEO platforms and best-in-class third-party tools. Youll also work closely with a senior international SEO lead who provides technical capability leadership alignment and support across markets.
 

What youll do 

i18n Technical SEO Craft Leadership

• Own the standards frameworks and playbooks that define how technical SEO is done across all international markets at Canva

• Define what technically excellent means for i18n pages and build the documentation processes and quality controls to make that standard repeatable

• Identify systemic technical opportunities and risks across markets and drive resolution with the right stakeholders

• Stay at the leading edge of technical SEO craft including AI-era considerations and translate emerging best practices into i18n-specific guidance

• Serve as the escalation point for complex technical issues that exceed specialist scope or require cross-functional coordination

Team Building & Capability Development

• Directly coach and develop a globally distributed team of Technical SEO Specialists owning their day-to-day technical guidance feedback cadence and growth trajectory

• Define clear expectations development goals and skill benchmarks for each specialist

• Build a coaching culture that emphasises ownership craft curiosity and transparent communication consistent with Canvas A-Player standard

• Create structured learning pathways working sessions and documentation that accelerate capability over time

• Reduce your own involvement in routine execution as specialists grow your goal is a team that raises the bar independently

Advisory to SEO Country Leads

• Serve as the go-to technical SEO partner for SEO Country Leads across all priority markets advising on technical strategy diagnosing issues and identifying opportunities they may not have the bandwidth to surface themselves

• Translate complex technical findings into clear prioritised recommendations that Country Leads can act on and communicate to their stakeholders

• Contribute technical depth to Country Lead opportunity assessments roadmaps and strategic proposals ensuring technical foundations are factored into market strategy from day one

• Proactively surface cross-market technical patterns to Country Leads helping them learn from whats working (or not working) in comparable markets

Central EN Technical SEO Alignment

• Own the relationship between i18n Technical SEO and Canvas Central (EN) Technical SEO team ensuring i18n requirements are understood represented and addressed in global platform decisions

• Translate EN technical standards into i18n-specific implementation guidance accounting for multilingual architecture locale targeting and market-specific platform dynamics

• Surface i18n edge cases gaps and requirements upstream to the Central team before they become systemic issues

• Ensure that i18n and EN technical SEO operate as one coherent engine not parallel functions

Core Technical SEO Execution & Governance

• Maintain deep hands-on expertise across all core technical SEO pillars: hreflang and locale targeting crawlability and indexation site architecture structured data Core Web Vitals and mobile optimisation

• Lead governance and quality control for hreflang implementation across 40 locales the most complex and consequential technical i18n challenge

• Conduct and oversee technical audits across international pages prioritising findings by market impact and execution complexity

• Build and own a reliable issue management system standardised tickets that clearly communicate potential impact enable dependency teams to understand trade-offs and facilitate prioritisation and decision-making across stakeholders

• Build trust and influence with key stakeholders across LOX Product Engineering and Data teams as well as International Product Engineering Localisation and Data Leadership removing blockers and accelerating truly local-first initiatives

• Collaborate with engineering and i18n platform teams on technical changes providing clear well-scoped requirements and validating outcomes post-implementation

• Maintain clear documentation of technical SEO health issue resolution and implementation outcomes across markets

GEO / AEO & Emerging Discovery

• Own i18n technical SEOs response to the evolution of AI-powered search and discovery including GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) and AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation)

• Assess how AI Overviews LLM-powered search (ChatGPT Perplexity Claude) and other emerging discovery surfaces are behaving differently across international markets

• Define technical best practices for AI discoverability in an i18n context: structured data for LLMs content formatting for AI-generated answers entity clarity across locales

• Build this capability into the i18n Technical SEO Playbook so that Country Leads and specialists can apply GEO/AEO thinking without needing to reinvent it in each market

• Share cross-market observations and experiments with Central SEO and International leadership to inform Canvas global approach to emerging discovery channels

Performance Monitoring & Reporting

• Develop and maintain a transparent measurement framework for i18n technical SEO health covering all priority markets with clear KPIs aligned to Country and Central SEO goals

• Monitor performance following technical changes and ensure outcomes are validated and communicated clearly

• Report proactively to your coach and relevant stakeholders sharing not just results but learnings blockers and recommended pivots

• Surface systemic issues early before they compound across markets

Building a Team and Methodology That Outlasts Individuals

• Build systems playbooks and ways of working that are owned by the team not dependent on any single person. Your goal is a technical SEO function that self-improves over time and doesnt stall when individuals move on

• Document decisions standards and learnings in a way that makes institutional knowledge transferable ensuring continuity across team changes market expansions and organisational evolution

• Develop specialists to the point where they can independently uphold and evolve the standards youve set not just execute against them

• Measure your success not only by what you personally deliver but by what the team and methodology continue to deliver without you

What were looking for

Technical SEO Mastery

• Demonstrated expertise across all three pillars of technical SEO: crawlability and indexation site architecture and structured data with a track record of high-impact delivery on large-scale websites (1000 pages)

• Deep specialisation in international technical SEO: hreflang implementation and governance multilingual site architecture locale targeting and i18n-specific indexation challenges

• Experience diagnosing and resolving complex technical issues not just identifying them including JS rendering issues crawl budget inefficiencies structured data errors and Core Web Vitals failures

• Proficiency with the full technical SEO toolset: Google Search Console Bing Webmaster Tools Botify Lumar (DeepCrawl) Screaming Frog Ahrefs and equivalent platforms

Required Experience

• Experience with large-scale database-driven or UGC platforms (marketplace pages template libraries user-generated content at scale)

• Experience with automation internal tooling or AI-assisted technical SEO workflows

• Familiarity with engineering collaboration at scale: ability to scope brief and validate technical changes on complex programmatically generated page sets

• Prior experience in a craft leadership or principal IC role within a global SEO team

Strategic & Advisory Capability

• Proven ability to translate technical SEO complexity into clear prioritised business-relevant recommendations for both SEO specialists and non-SEO stakeholders

• Experience contributing technical depth to broader SEO strategy: not just fixing issues but identifying the technical foundations that unlock strategic growth

• Comfortable operating as an internal consultant advising Country Leads and other senior stakeholders who have context you dont and earning trust through expertise and clarity

• Ability to assess trade-offs make prioritisation calls and explain reasoning transparently especially when resources are constrained

Coaching & People Development

• Experience coaching or mentoring technical SEO practitioners with evidence of improved output quality and growing independence over time

• Ability to give direct constructive feedback and hold high standards without micromanaging

• Patience and clarity in building capability: creating documentation running working sessions and designing learning experiences that accelerate growth

• Genuine ownership of others development not just task delegation

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Strong track record of working effectively with engineering product and platform teams translating SEO requirements into implementation-ready briefs

• Experience operating in a global multi-stakeholder environment where influence matters more than authority

• Clear proactive communicator who keeps all relevant parties informed without over-escalating or under-communicating

GEO / AEO & Future-Oriented Mindset

• Active understanding of how AI-powered search and discovery is evolving including how tools like ChatGPT Perplexity Google AI Overviews and Claude are reshaping how users find information

• Practical knowledge of GEO and AEO techniques: structured data optimisation for LLM citation content formatting for AI-generated answers entity establishment across locales

• Curiosity about how these dynamics play out differently across international markets and willingness to experiment document and share findings

• Channel-agnostic thinking: understands that technical SEO increasingly means technical discoverability across search engines AI tools and platforms yet to emerge

Ownership Mindset

• You act like its your craft your team and your markets not just your job

• You set the standard dont wait for it to be set for you

• You identify problems before they become crises and you bring solutions not just observations

• You build things that outlast you: playbooks processes and capabilities that continue working when youre not in the room

Nice-to-Haves

• Familiarity with multi-platform search ecosystems beyond Google (Bing Naver Yahoo Baidu etc)

• Background working across international markets

What Youll Learn and How Youll Develop

• Build and own the i18n Technical SEO craft function at one of the worlds fastest-growing companies

• Develop deep coaching and leadership capabilities through direct management of a globally distributed specialist team

• Shape how Canva approaches technical discoverability in the AI era contributing to a global SEO transformation in real time

• Partner closely with some of the worlds top in-house SEO leads as your direct coaches and collaborators

• Gain cross-functional influence across Engineering Product Templates and Data at global scale

• Establish yourself as a recognised authority in i18n technical SEO with the scope visibility and impact to match

Remote Work :

No

Employment Type :

Full-time