Director, Experience Design

The Company

PayPal has been revolutionizing commerce globally for more than 25 years. Creating innovative experiences that make moving money, selling, and shopping simple, personalized, and secure, PayPal empowers consumers and businesses in approximately 200 markets to join and thrive in the global economy. 

We operate a global, two-sided network at scale that connects hundreds of millions of merchants and consumers. We help merchants and consumers connect, transact, and complete payments, whether they are online or in person. PayPal is more than a connection to third-party payment networks. We provide proprietary payment solutions accepted by merchants that enable the completion of payments on our platform on behalf of our customers.

We offer our customers the flexibility to use their accounts to purchase and receive payments for goods and services, as well as the ability to transfer and withdraw funds. We enable consumers to exchange funds more safely with merchants using a variety of funding sources, which may include a bank account, a PayPal or Venmo account balance, PayPal and Venmo branded credit products, a credit card, a debit card, certain cryptocurrencies, or other stored value products such as gift cards, and eligible credit card rewards.  Our PayPal, Venmo, and Xoom products also make it safer and simpler for friends and family to transfer funds to each other. We offer merchants an end-to-end payments solution that provides authorization and settlement capabilities, as well as instant access to funds and payouts. We also help merchants connect with their customers, process exchanges and returns, and manage risk. We enable consumers to engage in cross-border shopping and merchants to extend their global reach while reducing the complexity and friction involved in enabling cross-border trade. 

Our beliefs are the foundation for how we conduct business every day.  We live each day guided by our core values of Inclusion, Innovation, Collaboration, and Wellness. Together, our values ensure that we work together as one global team with our customers at the center of everything we do – and they push us to ensure we take care of ourselves, each other, and our communities.

Job Summary:

This job establishes the overall strategy for user experience research, influencing key decisions at the executive level. They conduct research to gather insights into We’re looking for a design leader to define and deliver a unified payments and checkout experience across the full commerce lifecycle. You’ll establish the experience strategy and shared patterns that connect checkout, payment selection, authentication, transaction status, refunds, disputes, and recurring payments into one coherent system. Working across Product, Engineering, Risk, Compliance, and regional teams, you’ll turn complex payment, regulatory, and risk requirements into simple, trusted customer experiences. You’ll lead the evolution from fragmented and legacy flows toward a scalable platform, using experimentation and funnel insights to improve conversion and customer outcomes. You’ll also hire, grow, and lead a team of designers spanning platform and customer-facing experiences.

Job Description:

Essential Responsibilities:

• Establish overall business or technical strategy for user experience initiatives.
• Negotiate with and influence decision-making reaching the senior executive level
• Identify and resolve unique situations of substantial significance in user interface or interaction design
• Allocate resources, responsibly and apply creativity to enhancing user and customer experiences across digital and physical products and services
• Lead the development of user experience strategies that resonate with target audiences.
• Support and mentor less-experienced roles to provide an example of innovation, excellence, and day-to-day learning

Minimum Qualifications:

• 10+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 2 years of experience leading others

Additional Responsibilities & Preferred Qualifications:

Additional Responsibilities

• Define and champion the end-to-end experience vision for payments and checkout across merchants, markets, devices, and payment methods.

• Establish shared experience patterns for checkout components, payment method selection, authentication, identity and risk interventions, errors and declines, transaction status, and receipts.

• Map and simplify the full commerce lifecycle, including cart, authorization, authentication, settlement, refunds, disputes, and recurring billing.

• Develop a migration strategy that enables teams to move legacy experiences onto a unified system incrementally while protecting conversion and business performance.

• Partner closely with Product, Engineering, Risk, Compliance, and regional teams to reconcile customer needs with regulatory requirements, fraud controls, processor and network behavior, and local payment practices.

• Use experimentation, funnel analytics, customer insights, and operational data as core inputs to design strategy and decision-making.

• Establish design principles, standards, and reusable patterns that reduce bespoke solutions and enable teams to launch high-quality payment experiences faster.

• Drive alignment across teams and organizations, influencing partners and leaders beyond the direct reporting structure.

• Communicate effectively with senior executives on tradeoffs among conversion, trust, risk, cost, customer experience, and speed.

• Hire, develop, and lead a high-performing design team across platform and surface-level experiences.

• Define and measure experience outcomes, including checkout completion, adoption of shared patterns, launch velocity, and reduction in customer support contacts.

Preferred Qualifications

• Deep experience leading experience or product design for payments, checkout, commerce, financial services, or other complex transactional systems at scale.

• Demonstrated expertise in systems thinking, platform design, and design systems, with a track record of creating reusable experiences across products and teams.

• Strong understanding of payment and checkout journeys, including authorization, authentication, payment methods, transaction states, failures, refunds, disputes, and recurring payments.

• Experience designing within complex regulatory, risk, fraud, identity, and technical constraints while maintaining a simple customer experience.

• Proven ability to use experimentation, conversion funnels, behavioral data, and qualitative research to guide design decisions.

• Track record of leading organizational change and driving adoption of shared experience standards across independently operating teams.

• Experience building, coaching, and developing senior design talent and multidisciplinary design teams.

• Exceptional executive communication, storytelling, and influence skills, with the ability to create alignment across Product, Engineering, Design, Risk, Compliance, and business leadership.

• Ability to balance customer trust and simplicity with conversion, business performance, technical feasibility, and operational requirements.

Subsidiary:

PayPal

Travel Percent:

0

-

The base pay for this role will depend on where you work and the relevant experience and expertise you bring. The expected range of pay for this role by location is:


Primary Location | Pay Range:

Austin, Texas: ($198,000.00 - $294,250.00 Annually)


Additional Location(s) | Pay Range:

No other locations are assigned to this requisition currently.

Additional compensation for this role may include an annual performance bonus, equity, or other incentive compensation, as applicable.

PayPal does not charge candidates any fees for courses, applications, resume reviews, interviews, background checks, or onboarding. When making an application directly, we will never ask you to share passwords, one-time passcodes (OTP), or verification codes.  Any such request is a red flag and likely part of a scam. All communication regarding your application will come from official PayPal email domains. If you suspect fraudulent activity, please report it immediately.  To learn more about how to identify and avoid recruitment fraud please visit https://careers.pypl.com/contact-us. 

For the majority of employees, PayPal's balanced hybrid work model offers 3 days in the office for effective in-person collaboration and 2 days at your choice of either the PayPal office or your home workspace, ensuring that you equally have the benefits and conveniences of both locations.

Our Benefits:

At PayPal, we’re committed to building an equitable and inclusive global economy. And we can’t do this without our most important asset-you. That’s why we offer comprehensive, choice-based programs, to support all aspects of personal wellbeing—physical, emotional, and financial—delivering meaningful value where it matters most. We strive to create a flexible, balanced work culture with a holistic approach to benefits, including generous paid time off, healthcare coverage for you and your family, and resources to create financial security and support your mental health.

Who We Are:

Click Here to learn more about our culture and community.

Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion 

PayPal provides equal employment opportunity (EEO) to all persons regardless of age, color, national origin, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, genetic information, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.  In addition, PayPal will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities.  If you are unable to submit an application because of incompatible assistive technology or a disability, please contact us at paypalglobaltalentacquisition@paypal.com.

Belonging at PayPal: 

Our employees are central to advancing our mission, and we strive to create an environment where everyone can do their best work with a sense of purpose and belonging. Belonging at PayPal means creating a workplace with a sense of acceptance and security where all employees feel included and valued. We are proud to have a diverse workforce reflective of the merchants, consumers, and communities that we serve, and we continue to take tangible actions to cultivate inclusivity and belonging at PayPal.

Any general requests for consideration of your skills, please Join our Talent Community.

We know the confidence gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates. Please don’t hesitate to apply.