Vice President, Product Design and Research

SurveyMonkey•San Mateo, CA

1d•$289,000 - $34,000•Hybrid

About The Position

SurveyMonkey is the world’s most popular platform for surveys and forms, built for business—loved by users. We combine powerful capabilities with intuitive design, effectively serving every use case, from customer experience to employee engagement, market research to payment and registration forms. With built-in research expertise and AI-powered technology, it’s like having a team of expert researchers at your fingertips. Trusted by millions—from startups to Fortune 500 companies—SurveyMonkey helps teams gather insights and information that inspire better decisions, create experiences people love, and drive business growth. Discover how at surveymonkey.com. What we’re looking for SurveyMonkey is in the midst of reimagining its product to deliver deeper, more actionable insights for individuals and teams across the globe. As VP of Design & Research, you will lead the vision and execution for how customers experience our platform—across creation, collaboration, analysis, and beyond. You’ll oversee a multidisciplinary organization spanning Product Design, Content Design, Design Systems, and User Research. This leader will serve as a strategic partner to Product Management, elevating our understanding of user needs and helping the team sharpen focus on the highest-impact problems to solve. You’ll scale the craft of design and research, unify the user experience, and ensure customer insight is embedded into every phase of product development.

Requirements

12+ years of experience in product design and/or research, including 5+ years in senior leadership roles
Experience in product-led growth (PLG) or self-service environments, with an understanding of how experience impacts activation, conversion, and retention
Proven success leading multi-disciplinary UX and research organizations within complex SaaS or productivity platforms
A strong foundation in interaction design, UX strategy, design systems, and research methodologies
Experience unifying disconnected product surfaces into a coherent, scalable user experience across web and mobile
A track record of helping product teams focus on the right problems—leveraging qualitative and quantitative insight to inform and shape strategy
Technically current—actively explores and applies modern design, research, and AI tools to stay ahead of the curve
Confident communicator and executive presence—comfortable influencing at all levels and aligning diverse stakeholders around the user perspective

Responsibilities

Craft a Vision for Experience: Define and drive the end-to-end UX and research strategy for our platform—delivered in fast, iterative phases that create meaningful customer value
Build and Scale the Organization: Lead a world-class team across UX, content, systems, and research—nurturing deep expertise in each function while fostering a shared culture of creativity, inclusion, and impact
Be a Strategic Product Partner: Work hand-in-hand with Product and Engineering to identify the right problems to solve—grounding the roadmap in user needs, research insights, and behavioral data
Unify the Platform: Create design systems and experience patterns that tie together fragmented product surfaces into a cohesive, modern, multi-platform UX
Accelerate Self-Serve Growth: Help design PLG-ready, insight-led experiences that drive activation, engagement, and expansion
Lead with Innovation & Curiosity: Champion the use of AI/ML where it creates leverage—whether in user experience, research tooling, or design workflows
Drive Alignment Across the Org: Represent Research & Design at the executive level—advocating for the customer and aligning cross-functional teams around experience quality as a competitive advantage