New Opportunities at Canada’s National Observer: Hiring a Head of Growth to “lead our business operations”
Location: Vancouver, preferred but all locations will be considered. Hybrid
Department: Business & Growth
Employment Type: Full-time, permanent
Minimum Experience: Manager/Supervisor
Status: Management role in a unionized workplace (this position is non-union)
Compensation: $150,000 with bonuses for meeting annual revenue targets. 400,000 people have access to CNO through a paid individual or group account. We aim to double those numbers over the next 3 years.
Reports to: The Publisher
Applications deadline: June 5, 2026
The Role
This is an entrepreneurial role on the revenue and growth team for someone who wants to wake up daily to a meaningful job with a fantastic team that is making a difference for Canada.
You’ll be a highly valued member of the leadership team focused on generating revenue through subscriptions. You’ll oversee the user journey from first touch on the site, to engaged newsletter reader, to subscriber, constantly improving the experience for our audience. As you can, you’ll work with institutions on group subscriptions. You will immerse yourself in the opportunities our Civic Searchlight platform opens for further development and connection across Canada.
You’ll work closely with the Publisher, Head of Operations, Head of Product, and the Editor-in-Chief to help CNO grow through all of its channels.
Daily Responsibilities
Subscriptions. Work on paywall optimization, pricing strategy, conversion testing, and retention. Reduce friction, improve messaging. In order to do this, you are expected to read, watch, and listen to CNO content every day, and regularly audit the user journey — identifying friction, spotting opportunities.
Institutional sales. Grow our pipeline of government agencies, NGOs, universities, Indigenous organizations, labour unions, and corporate prospects. Run outreach, take discovery calls, write proposals, close deals, manage renewals. Build sales for Civic Searchlight, focusing on institutional agreements.
Marketing. Oversee marketing across acquisition, conversion, and retention. Direct the marketing email programs, the subscription campaigns, the audience growth work.
Team. Build in Year 1 by hiring someone to run the newsletters, manage the email programs, and own the funnel data. You manage them. Build out from there as the work grows.
Public-facing work. There will be many opportunities for public speaking and networking that take CNO further into the world. Promoting our Civic Searchlight “democracy superpower” will be a great highlight of the job.
Reporting. Build and own the revenue dashboard. Report on subscription growth, institutional pipeline, and marketing performance to the leadership team.
Basic Requirements
- You have a minimum of eight years experience in building revenue for an organization or organizations.
- You have working knowledge of subscription management and paywall technology.
- You can create user journeys to drive new subscriptions, retention while minimizing churn.
- You work with systems like Mailchimp, Piano, Google Analytics and other analytics platforms.
- You have a track record of revenue generation.
- You write and speak well.
- You work with budgets and spreadsheets.
- You’ve managed teams. You don’t need to have managed a big team, but you will manage a growing team.
- You understand and respect the editorial firewall.
- You use AI as a tool — for data and analytics, business strategy, and growth advice, but not as a replacement for your own thinking and voice.
What we Offer:
- Sun Life extended health package
- Benefits including one month of vacation, personal and sick days and equipment budget
- Career development, mentorship and opportunity over time to take on a larger leadership role in the organization as you hit important benchmarks
- Conference and training support
- Subscriptions to other news sources and industry magazines
How to apply — Please read carefully
Upload your CV and a cover letter to the Bamboo HR link. Deadline for applications is June 5, 2026
Requirements before applying: read Canada’s National Observer and explore the site. Sign up for our newsletters. It costs $1 to subscribe for a month — subscribe and see how things work. Your cover letter should demonstrate your research abilities, your writing voice, and your understanding of the company. You should come to your interview with an understanding of the user journey at CNO from the first touch through the subscription process. Sign up for Civic Searchlight and use it so you understand this as well. If you haven’t done a serious deep dive into what we do, and how we do it, you aren’t ready to apply.
A note on AI: Do not send us an AI-generated CV and cover letter. We want to hear your voice and see your work experience laid out clearly. We are looking for people who have generated revenue for some years through sales or fundraising. In your cover letter, make it clear why you’d want to work for Canada’s National Observer.
The successful candidate must be able to make a compelling presentation. Our subscribers are highly educated, informed Canadians. Inspiring and being able to engage with them at their level of critical thinking is a requirement. Show us that you can do this in your cover letter, and during your interview. We want to know that you can be as compelling on the page as you are in person.
If you are motivated to contribute to CNO‘s future, and you meet most of the requirements listed above, we’re excited to receive your application. This post will remain open until we find the right candidate, but we do hope to have someone in place by mid-September. If you have already applied and we have not contacted you yet for an interview, please do not apply again.
Canada’s National Observer is committed to building a team that reflects the country we cover. We actively welcome applications from Indigenous, Black, and racialized candidates, women, 2SLGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities. Our Vancouver newsroom is located on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations and the land we live on inspires the work we do.
About CNO
What began at a dining room table in Vancouver in 2008 is now one of Canada’s most decorated independent newsrooms.
Observer Media Group launched Vancouver Observer first, then Canada’s National Observer in 2015, betting that excellent reporting and accountability journalism could thrive outside legacy media. In 2017, CNO became the first digital-only publication in Canadian history to win a National Newspaper Award and receive a Michener citation for public service journalism. “The little engine that could,” then-Governor General David Johnston called it.
As we’ve grown, the awards have kept coming, and so has the impact. CNO investigations have forced government resignations, exposed dysfunction in the regulatory system overseeing a $15-billion pipeline, and revealed disinformation campaigns targeting local democracies. We have also shone a light on the best of Canadian innovation and solutions. In an era of climate crisis and coordinated disinformation, excellent accountability journalism has never mattered more.
Today, CNO covers Canada’s changing climate from newsrooms in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa, with more than 35,000 articles published. Last year we launched Civic Searchlight — our popular “superpower for democracy” — and earned ten new journalism award nominations this spring alone, including the inaugural Hinton Award for AI Safety Reporting from the Canadian Journalism Foundation.
Link to This Job and Application Portal
