Director, Experience Design Systems

PayPal • Austin, TX

19h • $198,000 - $294,250 • Hybrid

About The Position

PayPal is seeking a Director, Experience Design Systems to lead a team of product and UX designers working across developer experience, design systems, and AI-enabled design tooling. The role establishes goals and quality standards, develops designers, and supports delivery of useful, accessible, consistent experiences for internal and external developers. The successful candidate is an experienced people leader and active design practitioner who coaches designers, manages performance, builds a healthy team, and contributes hands-on when senior design judgment or technical depth can improve outcomes. Hands-on contributions may include prototypes, critical interaction concepts, design reviews, design-system guidance, and lightweight internal tools.

The Director partners closely with Product, Engineering, Developer Relations, Documentation, Research, Accessibility, and senior leaders. The role influences portfolio strategy and priorities while working within the direction of the portfolio leader and the decisions of accountable product and engineering teams. It guides developer dashboards, documentation experiences, APIs, SDKs, design-system practices, and approved AI-assisted workflows, using research and measurable outcomes to improve quality and usability.

The position is based in Austin, Texas. PayPal's balanced hybrid work model generally provides three days in the office and two days at the employee's choice of the office or home workspace. The expected annual base pay range for the Austin location is $198,000 to $294,250. Additional compensation may include an annual performance bonus, equity, or other incentive compensation, as applicable.

Requirements

• 10 or more years of relevant experience and a bachelor's degree, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• At least 2 years of experience leading others.
• Strong current skills in interaction design, prototyping, information architecture, design critique, and user-centered product development.
• Experience leading design for complex digital products and connecting user needs with business goals and technical constraints.
• Working knowledge of design-system architecture, component models, semantic design tokens, accessibility, front-end implementation constraints, and design-to-code workflows.
• Experience using qualitative and quantitative evidence to identify problems, guide design decisions, and evaluate outcomes.
• Ability to work across organizational boundaries and influence product, engineering, design, and senior leadership partners without direct authority.
• Clear written, verbal, and visual communication skills.
• A portfolio or case studies demonstrating storytelling, product and systems thinking, design judgment, leadership results, and meaningful personal contributions.

Nice To Haves

• 10 or more years of experience in product design, UX design, interaction design, or a related field.
• 5 or more years of direct management experience with product or UX designers.
• Demonstrated experience with hiring, coaching, performance management, career development, team health, retention, difficult feedback, and personnel decisions.
• Experience designing developer-facing products, platforms, dashboards, or internal tools.
• Experience building, governing, scaling, or increasing adoption of a design system.
• Experience evaluating or improving AI-assisted design or development workflows.
• Ability to use code or low-code tools to build functional prototypes or lightweight internal tools.
• Experience improving the usability of APIs, SDKs, developer documentation, documentation platforms, or MCP-based tools and integrations.
• Experience applying WCAG and inclusive-design practices to complex products and shared systems.
• Experience with global products, regulated environments, or products requiring strong security, privacy, and risk controls.
• Experience defining and using measures for developer experience, design-system adoption, design quality, delivery effectiveness, or team health.

Responsibilities

• Establish business or technical strategy for user experience initiatives and lead UX strategies that resonate with target audiences.
• Influence decision-making, including at the senior executive level, and address significant user interface or interaction design challenges.
• Allocate resources and improve user and customer experiences across digital and physical products and services.
• Lead, coach, and develop product and UX designers; set expectations, provide feedback, support career growth, recognize strong performance, and address performance concerns.
• Recruit and retain designers, build an inclusive and healthy team environment, and make fair personnel decisions.
• Translate portfolio goals into team design priorities, balancing delivery needs with longer-term improvements to shared systems, tools, and practices.
• Assign work according to business priorities, designer strengths and growth goals, and team capacity; identify staffing or skill gaps and recommend changes.
• Contribute hands-on to selected design work when senior judgment, systems thinking, or technical depth can reduce risk or improve quality.
• Lead design reviews and strengthen critique practices, grounding decisions in research, data, technical constraints, accessibility requirements, and business context.
• Guide the design of developer dashboards, documentation experiences, and related tools to support clear workflows and reduce effort for developers.
• Advise on the usability of APIs, SDKs, documentation, and MCP-based tools where relevant, partnering with the product and engineering leaders who own final product and technical decisions.
• Contribute to design-system strategy and standards, including component architecture, semantic design tokens, accessibility, contribution and documentation practices, releases, adoption, and alignment of design assets with production code.
• Coach designers and partner teams that use or contribute to the design system, helping resolve system-level design problems and apply shared patterns consistently.
• Improve approved AI-assisted design workflows and tooling through experiments, human review, and practical measures of results.
• Build or guide prototypes and lightweight internal tools to test ideas, reduce technical uncertainty, or improve workflows.
• Research developer and internal-user needs, using feedback and evidence to identify friction in tools, documentation, handoffs, and implementation workflows.
• Define and track meaningful outcomes, such as team health, design quality, task success, developer satisfaction, design-system adoption, accessibility, delivery time, and reduced rework.
• Build partnerships across Product, Engineering, Developer Relations, Documentation, Research, Accessibility, Legal, and Security; communicate with senior leaders, resolve disagreements, and influence decisions through evidence and design judgment.
• Support and mentor less-experienced employees, serving as an example of innovation, excellence, and day-to-day learning.

Benefits

• Comprehensive, choice-based benefits supporting physical, emotional, and financial wellbeing.
• Generous paid time off.
• Healthcare coverage for employees and their families.
• Resources to support financial security and mental health.
• Additional compensation may include an annual performance bonus, equity, or other incentive compensation, as applicable.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director