Director, Experience Design

PayPal • Austin, TX

1d • $198,000 - $294,250 • Hybrid

About The Position

PayPal is seeking a design leader to define and deliver a unified payments and checkout experience across the commerce lifecycle. The Director will establish the experience strategy and shared patterns connecting checkout, payment selection, authentication, transaction status, refunds, disputes, and recurring payments into a coherent system. The role works across Product, Engineering, Risk, Compliance, and regional teams to translate complex payment, regulatory, and risk requirements into simple, trusted customer experiences.

The Director will lead the evolution from fragmented and legacy flows toward a scalable platform, using experimentation and funnel insights to improve conversion and customer outcomes. They will hire, grow, and lead a design team spanning platform and customer-facing experiences, establish design standards and measurable experience outcomes, and influence senior executives and leaders across the organization.

PayPal’s balanced hybrid work model generally calls for three days in the office and two days either in the office or at home. The listed primary location is Austin, Texas. The expected annual base pay range there 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.

Nice To Haves

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

Responsibilities

• Establish the overall business or technical strategy for user experience initiatives.
• Negotiate with and influence decision-making through 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, modeling innovation, excellence, and day-to-day learning.
• 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 for moving legacy experiences onto a unified system incrementally while protecting conversion and business performance.
• Partner 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 to guide design strategy and decisions.
• Establish design principles, standards, and reusable patterns that reduce bespoke solutions and help teams launch high-quality payment experiences faster.
• Drive alignment across teams and organizations, influencing partners and leaders beyond the direct reporting structure.
• Communicate tradeoffs among conversion, trust, risk, cost, customer experience, and speed to senior executives.
• 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.

Benefits

• Generous paid time off
• Healthcare coverage for employees and their families
• Resources to support financial security and mental health
• Annual performance bonus, equity, or other incentive compensation, as applicable

What This Job Offers

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