Director, Experience Design Systems

PayPal•New York, NY

3d•$218,000 - $323,950•Hybrid

About The Position

This role leads a team of product and UX designers supporting developer experience, design systems, and AI-enabled design tooling across PayPal. Sets clear goals and quality standards, develops designers, and enables the delivery of useful, accessible, and 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 directly when senior design judgment or technical depth can improve outcomes. Hands-on work may include prototypes, critical interaction concepts, design reviews, design-system guidance, and lightweight internal tools. Partners closely with Product, Engineering, Developer Relations, Documentation, Research, Accessibility, and senior leaders. Influences portfolio strategy and priorities while operating within the direction of the portfolio leader and accountable product and engineering teams.

Requirements

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

Nice To Haves

10 or more years of relevant experience in product design, UX design, interaction design, or a related field.
5 or more years of experience directly managing product or UX designers.
Demonstrated experience with hiring, coaching, performance management, career development, team health, retention, and difficult feedback or personnel decisions.
A portfolio or set of case studies that shows strong storytelling, product and systems thinking, design judgment, leadership results, and meaningful personal contributions to the work.
Strong current skills in interaction design, prototyping, information architecture, design critique, and user-centered product development.
Experience leading design work 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.
Demonstrated 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.
Experience designing developer-facing products, platforms, dashboards, or internal tools.
Experience helping to build, govern, scale, or increase 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 that require 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 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
Lead, coach, and develop a team of product and UX designers. Set clear expectations, give timely feedback, support career growth, recognize strong performance, and address performance concerns directly and fairly.
Recruit and retain strong designers. Build an inclusive team environment that supports collaboration, sound judgment, high design quality, and sustainable performance.
Translate portfolio goals into clear design priorities for the team. Balance near-term delivery needs with longer-term improvements to shared systems, tools, and practices.
Assign work based on business priorities, designer strengths, growth goals, and available capacity. Identify staffing or skill gaps and recommend practical changes.
Maintain current hands-on design knowledge. Contribute directly to selected work where senior judgment, systems thinking, or technical depth can reduce risk or improve quality.
Lead design reviews and strengthen critique practices. Help designers use research, data, technical constraints, accessibility requirements, and business context to make sound decisions.
Guide the design of developer dashboards, documentation experiences, and related tools. Ensure that these experiences support clear workflows and reduce effort for internal and external developers.
Advise teams on the usability of APIs, SDKs, documentation, and MCP-based tools when the work aligns with the candidate's experience. Partner with product and engineering leaders who own the final product and technical decisions.
Contribute to design-system strategy and standards. Advise on component architecture, semantic design tokens, accessibility, contribution practices, documentation, release practices, adoption, and alignment between design assets and production code.
Coach designers and partner teams that use or contribute to the design system. Help teams resolve system-level design problems and apply shared patterns consistently.
Improve approved AI-assisted design workflows and design tooling where these methods can produce clear gains in quality, speed, or consistency. Support small experiments, human review, and practical measures of results.
Build or guide prototypes and lightweight internal tools when direct implementation is the fastest way to test an idea, reduce technical uncertainty, or improve a workflow.
Research the needs of developers and other internal users. Use feedback and evidence to identify friction in tools, documentation, handoffs, and implementation workflows.
Define and track meaningful outcomes for the team's work. Measures can include team health, design quality, task success, developer satisfaction, design-system adoption, accessibility, delivery time, and reduced rework.
Build effective partnerships across Product, Engineering, Developer Relations, Documentation, Research, Accessibility, Legal, and Security. Communicate clearly with senior leaders, resolve disagreements, and influence decisions through evidence and sound design judgment.