Principal Product Designer

PayPal; San Jose (CA); Hybrid; USD 137,000 - 319,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking a Principal Product Designer to join their dynamic team in San Jose. This role offers the chance to shape the future of digital commerce through innovative design strategies that enhance user experiences. As a key member of the Experience Design department, you'll collaborate with cross-functional teams to create engaging, user-centric solutions that redefine how consumers interact with financial services. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in interaction and visual design, with a passion for mentoring and leading design excellence. Join a forward-thinking company that values creativity and collaboration!

Benefits

Flexible work environment

Employee share options

Health and life insurance

Mental health resources

Diversity and inclusion programs

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience in consumer-facing digital product design.
• Ability to blend interaction design with brand visual and content design.

Responsibilities

• Lead design strategy and execution for the Principal Product Designer role.
• Mentor junior designers and drive design quality across teams.

Skills

Interaction Design

Visual Design

Brand Expression

User Experience Research

Prototyping

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Design or related field

Master's Degree in Design or related field

Tools

Figma

Adobe Creative Suite

Sketch

Job description

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The Company
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. We help merchants and consumers connect, transact, and complete payments, whether they are online or in person. PayPal is more than a connection to third-party payment networks. We provide proprietary payment solutions accepted by merchants that enable the completion of payments on our platform on behalf of our customers.

We offer our customers the flexibility to use their accounts to purchase and receive payments for goods and services, as well as the ability to transfer and withdraw funds. We enable consumers to exchange funds more safely with merchants using a variety of funding sources, which may include a bank account, a PayPal or Venmo account balance, PayPal and Venmo branded credit products, a credit card, a debit card, certain cryptocurrencies, or other stored value products such as gift cards, and eligible credit card rewards. Our PayPal, Venmo, and Xoom products also make it safer and simpler for friends and family to transfer funds to each other. We offer merchants an end-to-end payments solution that provides authorization and settlement capabilities, as well as instant access to funds and payouts. We also help merchants connect with their customers, process exchanges and returns, and manage risk. We enable consumers to engage in cross-border shopping and merchants to extend their global reach while reducing the complexity and friction involved in enabling cross-border trade.

Our beliefs are the foundation for how we conduct business every day. We live each day guided by our core values of Inclusion, Innovation, Collaboration, and Wellness. Together, our values ensure that we work together as one global team with our customers at the center of everything we do – and they push us to ensure we take care of ourselves, each other, and our communities.

Job Description Summary:
This role sits within the broader Experience Design department which is made up of unique product design specialties including: Consumer, Merchant, Research, Content, Design Systems, and Operations. Experience Design is driving the design and experience strategy that will evolve the PayPal experience beyond the core transaction and into new realms of the end-to-end commerce journey. This includes dimensions that engage customers well before and after the point of a sales transaction with a brand or money exchange with a peer. It is an incredibly exciting time to join a design team that will be at the forefront of PayPal’s product and brand transformation. No matter the role or level, all positions are nurtured and encouraged to think through critical problems with well-integrated, multi-discipline teams (pods) and a well-defined culture that’s geared towards explorations, bold provocations, and speedy impact in the market. The department is led by PayPal’s Chief Design Officer and works intimately with Engineering, Product Management, Brand Design, and Marketing teams.

Job Description:
Pod Overview
The Core App pod defines the overall product architecture and positioning, navigation structure and experiences that drive users into the wider PayPal app ecosystem. In addition to managing the tab structure, the design work for this pod include product design for: the home tab, activity tab, profile, account and all onboarding experiences. Designers in this pod regularly must experiment and evolve information architecture, content strategy, visual design and layout, ingress points, brand design expressions, personalization, in-page navigation, and value propositioning. The experiences require one to radically simplify content without losing depth of content and utility. A designer also must understand how to blend hyper utility with brand defining visual expressions through an owned UI, interaction, motion and digital design language. Equal parts form and function, all designers in this pod should have a strength in art direction, composition, brand design, contrast/hierarchy, information architecture, navigation, and formulating clear strategic points of view that prop-up the positioning of the app’s direct and differentiated value for our customers.

Role Overview
The Principal Designer on our team serves as the Provocateur. They push the design thinking and generate concepts and opportunities that others have yet to consider or see. They are exceptional taste makers in terms of art direction, visual design, and brand expression within a digital product. As a Principal designer you serve as a creative director and leader of experience strategy for specific projects within a pod and will set the tone and standard for the design output for the product and more junior designers. Focused on craft, you will lead by example and drive the definition, strategy, and design concepts against specific briefs from the business and our product partners. While not a manager, you will find yourself mentoring and leading a small group of designers with a very minimal amount of administrative responsibility. 90-95% of this role is pure design and the level comes with an expectation that the design quality can spread not only within your pod but across pods and into our product design system team.

Standard Requirements

• You are kind, generous, nurturing, supportive, and can see beyond your own ideas or instincts.
• You love to study and design for consumer behaviors with a specific interest in consumerism, retail, and evolving cultural norms.
• You believe in the power of brand, a well-articulated point of view, and the necessity of driving measurable business outcomes.
• A deep love and bias for designing products that blend interaction design with brand visual, and content design. All designers are expected to be as sensitive to visuals as they are to system and interaction details.
  
  
  

Role Requirements

• Magical powers come through your ability to add clarity to opportunities and to frame problems that drive designers and product work into new realms.
• You love craft and are driven by refining and inventing new capabilities - either through broadened territories like motion design or technology/software tools.
• Undeniable ability to inspire and provoke new thinking that can catalyze partners and designers on your respective teams.
• You have a remarkable ability to set and evolve the vision of a product experience through your strategic storytelling, problem driven frameworks, insight gathering, comprehension of visual design and interactive design craft.
• You have set new standards around design in your previous work and can demonstrate major shifts in quality and perspective.
• Incredible ability to tell stories of your work through presentation design, prototypes, storytelling, and explicit connection to larger business strategies.
• Deep understanding for how to motivate design work through explorations, concept development, and creative directions that draft off a core brand design system.
• Proven ability to broaden a creative brief and introduce unexpected visionary concepts that evolve the orthodoxy and convention of a product experience, on behalf of the user’s behaviors.
• Ability to take calculated risks in concepts - pushing against some conventions while not straying too far that it becomes unusable or incongruent with a brand positioning or identity.
• Thrive on provoking new thinking through design work - both in interaction, architecture and visual brand design terms.
• You love being an independent contributor but also understand you are a leader that others will look up to and model against based on your insanely talented craft and visionary instincts.
• 12+ years of experience in consumer facing digital product design work.
  
  
  

Designer Growth

Our team places great focus on our culture. This includes, our ways of working, our rituals around feedback, our tact for delivering nurturing critique, and our attention to each and every designer’s aspiration as they ascend towards their next defined career levels. You will have opportunities to stretch into areas beyond your core pods and will experience hands on mentorship to ensure you’re expose

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, ensuring that you equally have the benefits and conveniences of both locations.

Our Benefits:

At PayPal, we’re committed to building an equitable and inclusive global economy. And we can’t do this without our most important asset—you. That’s why we offer benefits to help you thrive in every stage of life. We champion your financial, physical, and mental health by offering valuable benefits and resources to help you care for the whole you.

We have great benefits including a flexible work environment, employee shares options, health and life insurance and more. To learn more about our benefits please visit https://www.paypalbenefits.com

Who We Are:

To learn more about our culture and community visit https://about.pypl.com/who-we-are/default.aspx

Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

PayPal provides equal employment opportunity (EEO) to all persons regardless of age, color, national origin, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, genetic information, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. In addition, PayPal will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities. If you are unable to submit an application because of incompatible assistive technology or a disability, please contact us at [e-mail].

Belonging at PayPal:

Our employees are central to advancing our mission, and we strive to create an environment where everyone can do their best work with a sense of purpose and belonging. Belonging at PayPal means creating a workplace with a sense of acceptance and security where all employees feel included and valued. We are proud to have a diverse workforce reflective of the merchants, consumers, and communities that we serve, and we continue to take tangible actions to cultivate inclusivity and belonging at PayPal.

Any general requests for consideration of your skills, please Join our Talent Community.

We know the confidence gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates. Please don’t hesitate to apply.

Notice to Applicants and Employees who reside within New York city. Click https://careers.pypl.com/Contact-Us/default.aspx

to view the notice.

REQ ID R0124124

Seniority level

• Seniority level

  Not Applicable

Employment type

• Employment type

  Full-time

Job function

• Job function

  Design, Art/Creative, and Information Technology

• Industries

  Software Development, Financial Services, and Technology, Information and Internet

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