Principal Experience Designer, Customer Resolution

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. Our beliefs are the foundation for how we conduct business every day, guided by core values of Inclusion, Innovation, Collaboration, and Wellness.

About the role

We’re hiring a Principal Designer to lead high-stakes customer experiences across disputes, account limitations, and recovery. This role will redefine how we design for moments of failure and recovery, transforming fragmented, opaque processes into cohesive, transparent systems that build long-term trust. You’ll shape how we prevent, navigate, and resolve complex financial issues while balancing customer needs with risk, compliance, and business constraints. You’ll set direction not just for individual experiences, but for the systems and workflows that enable them, influencing how design operates across the company.

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.
• Set direction in a complex, high-stakes space: Define and evolve end-to-end strategy across disputes, limitations, and recovery; turn ambiguity into clear, actionable plans; establish principles for trust, transparency, and fairness.
• Design and evolve systems, not just flows: Create scalable patterns across product, support, and operations; connect fragmented journeys; raise the bar on edge cases and failure states.
• Lead through influence across partners: Align Product, Engineering, Risk, Legal, Ops, and Support; navigate tradeoffs across customer experience, compliance, and business impact.
• Lead the experience design pod: Set direction across product design, research, and content; align work across disciplines to deliver cohesive, high-quality experiences.
• Shape design beyond the domain: Contribute to company-wide design direction and coherence; define standards, share knowledge, and elevate quality across the organization.
• Transform how we design for high-risk systems: Redefine patterns and workflows for constraint-heavy experiences, improving how the organization approaches failure, recovery, and prevention at scale.

Requirements

• 10+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR any equivalent combination of education and experience.

Skills

• Systems & strategic thinking: Simplifies complex, multi-step systems into clear, user-centered experiences; balances user needs, business goals, and constraints (technical, risk, compliance).
• Experience in complex domains: Background in constraint-heavy spaces (e.g., fintech, healthcare, marketplaces, enterprise); strong grasp of edge cases and end-to-end journeys.
• Influence & leadership: Leads through influence across cross-functional partners and senior leadership; drives alignment in ambiguous spaces; elevates thinking and quality across the broader design organization.
• Executive communication: Communicates complex ideas with clarity and authority; effectively presents to senior leadership and shapes how design is understood and valued.
• Craft & execution: Sets a high bar for interaction design and information architecture; makes complex systems clear and usable across all scenarios; leverages prototyping, tooling, and AI to scale impact.

Pay

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:

• Austin, Texas: $198,000.00 - $294,250.00 Annually
• San Jose, California: $218,000.00 - $323,950.00 Annually
• New York City, New York: $218,000.00 - $323,950.00 Annually

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

Schedule

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.

Benefits

At PayPal, we offer comprehensive, choice-based programs to support all aspects of personal wellbeing—physical, emotional, and financial. Benefits include:

• Generous paid time off.
• Healthcare coverage for you and your family.
• Resources to create financial security and support your mental health.