Principal, Distinguished Experience Architect

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 Summary:

We’re looking for a Principal, Distinguished Experience Architect, to lead a transformative effort in shaping the system-level architecture of our customer experiences. This is a senior design leadership role for someone who brings order to complexity, coherence to journeys, and clarity to structure.

Job Description:

Essential 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

Minimum Qualifications:

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

Reporting to the VP of Design, PayPal Consumer, you will define and govern the architectural foundation of our experience ecosystem—spanning platforms, channels, and product teams. While anchored in the PayPal Consumer, team, your influence will extend across the entire Experience Design organization, enabling scalable, intentional, and brand-aligned experiences.

What Is Experience Architecture?

Experience Architecture is the system-level design discipline that ensures every interaction, flow, and journey aligns to a coherent, intentional, and scalable experience—across surfaces, channels, and customer touchpoints.

Where Experience Strategy defines the why and where to play, Experience Architecture defines how it all fits together—across structure, sequencing, navigation, and behavioral flow.

This is not just a UX strategy or systems design role—it’s both. You will lead the practice of Experience Architecture: the structuring of journeys, flows, navigation, taxonomy, and interaction models into a unified, extensible system. Your work will ensure that every interaction fits together to form a complete, coherent whole—one that reflects our brand, reinforces behavior, and reduces experience entropy as we scale.

Key Responsibilities

• Architect the Experience Ecosystem
  Define and evolve canonical flows, journey structures, and interaction patterns that ensure experience coherence across teams, products, and platforms.

• Lead Horizontal Experience Strategy
  Architect critical cross-product journeys (e.g., Account, Wallet, Rewards) that unify the customer experience across silos.

• Own and Govern Taxonomy & Information Architecture
  Partner with Content Design, Product Design, and Engineering to establish scalable IA systems and navigational models.

• Advance Service Design & System Mapping
  Connect frontstage flows to backstage systems and operational logic; drive service blueprinting across the product lifecycle.

• Drive CX Improvements
  Identify and resolve systemic customer experience issues across surfaces, workflows, and product areas through architectural interventions—not just interface refinements.

• Partner with Design Systems
  Collaborate to encode architectural logic into reusable components and interaction frameworks, ensuring real behavior is reflected—not just UI consistency.

• Transform Experience Delivery
  Work with Product Ops and PMO to embed architectural checkpoints into planning, roadmapping, and SDLC processes—accelerating delivery while protecting experience integrity.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience in experience design, UX architecture, or systems design, with a strong portfolio demonstrating strategic impact.

• Proven leadership in structuring complex digital ecosystems and scaling design systems.

• Deep expertise in journey mapping, taxonomy design, interaction modeling, and platform strategy.

• Exceptional communication and storytelling skills, with the ability to influence across disciplines and levels.

• Experience working in large-scale, matrixed organizations with a focus on platform thinking and design maturity.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with enterprise platforms, developer tools, or internal design infrastructure.

• Familiarity with accessibility standards, localization, and inclusive design practices.

• Strategic mindset with a bias for action and a passion for enabling great design at scale.

Subsidiary:

PayPal

Travel Percent:

0

-

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:

Primary Location | Pay Range:

San Jose, California | ($218,000.00 - $323,950.00 Annually)

Additional Location(s) | Pay Range:

No other locations are assigned to this requisition currently.

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

PayPal does not charge candidates any fees for courses, applications, resume reviews, interviews, background checks, or onboarding. When making an application directly, we will never ask you to share passwords, one-time passcodes (OTP), or verification codes.  Any such request is a red flag and likely part of a scam. All communication regarding your application will come from official PayPal email domains. If you suspect fraudulent activity, please report it immediately.  To learn more about how to identify and avoid recruitment fraud please visit https://careers.pypl.com/contact-us. 

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 comprehensive, choice-based programs, to support all aspects of personal wellbeing—physical, emotional, and financial—delivering meaningful value where it matters most. We strive to create a flexible, balanced work culture with a holistic approach to benefits, including generous paid time off, healthcare coverage for you and your family, and resources to create financial security and support your mental health.

Who We Are:

Click Here to learn more about our culture and community.

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 [email protected].

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.