SEO Country Lead - Italy

Job Description

Join the team redefining how the world experiences design

Hey, g'day, ciao, buongiorno, 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

While we support flexible ways of working, our preference for this role would be in Milan, working in a hybrid capacity. You'll have the flexibility to balance remote focused work with in-person collaboration, while partnering with team members in Italy and Canva's global SEO community. We have a co-working space in Wellio Milano Dante.

This is a full-time contingent worker opportunity for 12 months with the opportunity to extend.

About the team

You'll join the Logged Out Experience Group within Canva's Growth Supergroup, working with teams focused on growing Canva's reach and helping more people discover what they can create.

You'll work in a locally embedded model while connecting into Canva's broader SEO community. That means partnering closely with stakeholders in Italy while collaborating with SEO specialists, product managers, content specialists and other experts globally.

The opportunity is bigger than growing SEO in one country. What you learn in Italy can help shape frameworks, systems and approaches that support Canva's growth across international markets.

What you'd be doing in this role

As Canva scales, change continues to be part of our DNA. But we like to think that's all part of the fun. So this will give you the flavour of the type of things you'll be working on when you start, but this will likely evolve.

International growth is a major focus for Canva. We're moving beyond translating strategies that have worked elsewhere and building truly local approaches that reflect how people discover and use Canva in individual markets.

As our SEO Country Lead for Italy, you'll lead Canva's SEO growth in the Italian market. You'll define and execute an SEO strategy grounded in local search behaviour, user needs and market opportunities, while connecting your work to Canva's broader growth priorities.

You'll own the strategy across technical SEO, content and authority building. You'll be both a strategist and an operator: identifying opportunities, prioritising what matters, influencing stakeholders and turning insights into measurable growth.

At the moment, this role is focused on:

• Owning the end-to-end SEO strategy for Italy across technical SEO, content and authority building, creating a focused roadmap aligned with Canva's international growth goals.
• Becoming a trusted expert on Italy's search landscape by analysing user intent, search behaviour, competitors and emerging market trends.
• Identifying and prioritising high-impact opportunities that grow organic sessions, signups, active users, returning users and overall search visibility.
• Partnering with localisation, design, product, engineering, data and content teams to create high-quality experiences that feel genuinely relevant to people in Italy.
• Maintaining strong technical SEO foundations across areas including site speed, crawlability, indexation, structured data, hreflang and mobile optimisation.
• Building effective ways of working, reporting frameworks and repeatable processes that enable the market to operate with increasing autonomy.
• Exploring how search and discovery are evolving through AI-powered experiences, including AI search, GEO and AEO, and sharing learnings that can help Canva grow globally.

You're probably a match if

• You're a native Italian speaker with business-level English, with a deep understanding of Italian search behaviour, cultural nuances and internet user dynamics.
• You've successfully led SEO initiatives for large websites and understand how technical SEO, content and authority building work together.
• You're comfortable developing a market strategy from the ground up — using data and local knowledge to decide where to invest rather than simply following an existing global playbook.
• You're highly analytical and can turn performance data into clear priorities, KPIs and recommendations that connect SEO activity to business impact.
• You're a strong relationship builder who can influence without authority, work across disciplines and communicate complex SEO topics clearly to different audiences.
• You bring an ownership mindset: you're comfortable with autonomy, proactively solve problems and find ways forward when resources, processes or dependencies create blockers.
• You're curious about how discoverability is changing and are already thinking beyond traditional search engines to AI-powered search, LLMs, social search and emerging channels.
• You're comfortable working with SEO and analytics tools such as Looker, Omni, Search Console, SEMrush, Ahrefs, Screaming Frog and similar platforms.
• Experience developing multi-year market expansion strategies, working in hyper-growth environments, mobile-first optimisation or multi-platform search ecosystems would be a bonus.

What's in it for you?

This is an opportunity to take meaningful ownership of SEO for one of Canva's international markets. You'll develop your ability to build locally relevant growth strategies while operating within a global organisation, strengthen your cross-functional influence and contribute insights that can shape how Canva approaches international SEO.

You'll also have the opportunity to explore the changing future of search and discoverability — experimenting with new approaches and helping build the methodologies Canva can use as user behaviour evolves.

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 everything listed above, we still want to hear from you.

Please note that interviews are conducted virtually. Please submit your CV & application in English.