Principal Design Technologist

The Venmo Team at PayPal is seeking a Principal Design Technologist to lead at the intersection of design, engineering, and product development. This senior role involves strategic technical leadership and deep design expertise to drive innovation across the product portfolio. The technologist will architect and optimize user experiences for internal and external developers, leveraging advanced technical skills and design thinking to create efficient, scalable solutions that bridge design vision and technical implementation. Responsibilities include establishing UX strategies, influencing decision-making, and enhancing digital product experiences.

Must Have

• Lead at the intersection of design, engineering, and product development
• Architect and optimize user experiences for internal and external developers
• Establish overall business or technical strategy for user experience initiatives
• Negotiate with and influence decision-making at senior executive level
• Identify and resolve unique situations in user interface or interaction design
• Allocate resources responsibly and apply creativity to enhancing user and customer experiences
• Lead the development of user experience strategies that resonate with target audiences
• Support and mentor less-experienced roles
• Lead the design of tools, documentation, and platforms that enhance developer experience
• Create high-fidelity prototypes and functional front-end components
• Work closely with product managers, engineering teams, UX designers, and other cross-functional teams
• Work with engineers to design intuitive user interfaces and experiences for PayPal’s APIs, SDKs
• Serve as an advocate for the developer community by identifying pain points and opportunities to improve workflows
• Keep abreast of emerging trends in developer tools, frameworks, and best practices
• 10+ years relevant experience

Good to Have

• Familiarity with API design best practices
• Experience with modern front-end web frameworks (React, Angular, Vue.js)
• Experience with mobile development platforms and tools
• Understanding of cloud services (AWS, Azure, etc.) and how they relate to developer tools
• Prior experience working within fintech, payment systems, or a similar technical domain

Perks & Benefits

• Flexible work environment
• Employee shares options
• Health insurance
• Life insurance
• Medical benefits
• Dental benefits
• Vision benefits

Job Summary:

At PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL), we believe that every person has the right to participate fully in the global economy. Our mission is to revolutionize commerce globally to make moving money, selling and shopping, personalized and secure.

The Venmo Team is seeking an exceptional Principal Design Technologist to lead at the intersection of design, engineering, and product development. This senior role combines strategic technical leadership with deep design expertise to drive innovation across our product portfolio. You will architect and optimize user experiences for both internal and external developers, using advanced technical skills and design thinking to create delightful, efficient, and scalable solutions that bridge the gap between design vision and technical implementation.

Do you make your way through ambiguity? This might be the role for you.

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

Expected Qualifications:

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

Additional Responsibilities & Preferred Qualifications:

Design and Build Developer Tools & Platforms: Lead the design of tools, documentation, and platforms that enhance the developer experience with PayPal’s APIs, SDKs, and integrations. This includes improving workflows, debugging tools, onboarding processes, and support materials.

Prototyping & Front-End Development: Create high-fidelity prototypes and functional front-end components, and proof-of-concepts for emerging technologies, to define new interaction patterns, and/or to bring new ideas to life. Be comfortable experimenting with different technologies to validate solutions.

Leadership: Drive best practices in process and methodology and deliver against business and customer needs.

Collaborate Across Teams: Work closely with product managers, engineering teams, UX designers, and other cross-functional teams to ensure developer needs are met with robust, user-centered design solutions. Advocate for the voice of developers in product decision-making.

Enhance API and SDK Usability: Work with engineers to design intuitive user interfaces and experiences for developers interacting with PayPal’s APIs, SDKs, and other technical resources, ensuring they are easy to use and well-documented.

Advocate for Developer Experience: Serve as an advocate for the developer community by identifying pain points and opportunities to improve workflows, ensuring that developers have an efficient and enjoyable experience when using PayPal products and services.

Stay Current with Industry Trends: Keep abreast of emerging trends in developer tools, frameworks, and best practices. Apply knowledge of current and future technologies to continuously improve PayPal’s developer platform and experience.

Examples of Day-to-Day Work

Prototyping an interactive support wizard experience that helps find relevant developer documentation using the Brave Search API and testing it head-to-head against our current search tools in moderated user testing sessions.

Working with a UI designer and content strategist to redesign the developer portal side navigation with improved information architecture and interaction patterns, then handing off an interactive vanilla HTML/CSS/JS template of the improved UI to engineering to guide their React component development.

Reviewing early-stage UI wireframes of a PayPal integration upgrade flow for technical implementation risks, working with engineering to understand API constraints, and helping product management prioritize and roadmap the behind-the-scenes updates needed to deliver the intended user experience.

Technical Skills:

Our design system spans multiple platforms. Ideal candidates have hands-on experience with any combination of:

• Experience creating modern mobile experiences in native mobile languages (Kotlin and Swift).
• iOS development (UIKit, SwiftUI)
• Android development (Jetpack Compose, Android Views)
• Modern web frameworks (React/Next.js or similar)
• Experience building or improving APIs, SDKs, and developer tools

We're more interested in your ability to think systematically across platforms than checking every box.

Design Expertise:

• Strong understanding of user-centered design principles and methodologies.
• Experience in designing interactive prototypes and wireframes
• Familiarity with Figma or other modern UI design tools
• Ability to work in a multidisciplinary team, blending design thinking with engineering processes.

Communication & Collaboration:

• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to present technical and design concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience in working closely with product managers, engineers, and other stakeholders in a collaborative, agile environment.

Problem-Solving & Innovation:

• Demonstrated ability to solve complex problems by combining technical and design expertise.
• Passion for improving developer productivity and experience with a strong focus on making tools and processes more intuitive and efficient.

Experience:

• 10+ years of experience in a related position or equivalent experience in related disciplines.
• This ideally includes 3+ years of experience in a developer-focused position, or in a similar design technologist role.

Nice-to-Have:

• Familiarity with API design best practices.
• Experience with modern front-end web frameworks (React, Angular, Vue.js).
• Experience with mobile development platforms and tools.
• Understanding of cloud services (AWS, Azure, etc.) and how they relate to developer tools.
• Prior experience working within fintech, payment systems, or a similar technical domain.