Design Research Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

Company Overview
Docusign brings agreements to life. Over 1.5 million customers and more than a billion people in over 180 countries use Docusign solutions to accelerate the process of doing business and simplify people's lives. With intelligent agreement management, Docusign unleashes business-critical data that is trapped inside of documents. Until now, these were disconnected from business systems of record, costing businesses time, money, and opportunity. Using Docusign's Intelligent Agreement Management platform, companies can create, commit, and manage agreements with solutions created by the #1 company in e-signature and contract lifecycle management (CLM).
What you'll do
As the Vice President of Product Design & Research, you will direct and manage a global design organization to deliver elegant, customer-focused experiences for millions of users around the globe. You will define, articulate, and champion a single, cohesive experiential design vision to deliver world-class end-to-end customer experiences that drive corporate goals and significant business impact. In this role, you will lead our design teams, fostering a culture of high collaboration, design excellence, and increased product maturity across next-generation AI interfaces and product surfaces.
This position is a people manager role reporting to the Chief Product Officer.
Responsibility

• Define, articulate, and champion a single, cohesive experiential design vision to deliver world-class end-to-end customer experiences
• Partner with senior cross-functional leaders, including Product, Engineering, and Marketing leadership, to tie business and company goals back into the design organization
• Set the design vision and advocate for design at all levels of the organization, ensuring strategy aligns with corporate goals, product roadmaps, and technological capabilities
• Foster a culture of collaboration, excellence, and consistent application of design standards through well thought out organizational design and processes
• Design and organize a global organization with a strong delivery process, project management framework, and clear operating models for how designers interface with product managers and engineers
• Recruit, mentor, and grow a high-performing design organization, elevating overall design maturity and impact across multiple geographic locations
• Oversee the user experience, user interface, interaction design, content strategy, and visual design across multiple global product surfaces
• Lead the development and maintenance of scalable design systems and standards to ensure absolute consistency, quality, and efficiency across all product touchpoints
• Drive the design strategy for next-generation AI capabilities, intelligent workflows, and agentic user interfaces, ensuring seamless and intuitive human-AI collaboration
• Leverage extensive user research, customer feedback, and design insights to inform decisions, gracefully balancing definitive data with professional intuition
• Champion product-led growth (PLG) initiatives through user-centered onboarding experiences, self-service discovery loops, and continuous user journey optimizations
• Balance adeptly complex commercial business needs with simple, engaging, user-centered solutions
• Measure, evaluate, and report on the concrete impact of design initiatives on key business metrics such as product adoption, conversion, retention, and customer satisfaction

Job Designation
Hybrid: Employee divides their time between in-office and remote work. Access to an office location is required. (Frequency: Minimum 2 days per week; may vary by team but will be weekly in-office expectation)
Positions at Docusign are assigned a job designation of either In Office, Hybrid or Remote and are specific to the role/job. Preferred job designations are not guaranteed when changing positions within Docusign. Docusign reserves the right to change a position's job designation depending on business needs and as permitted by local law.
What you bring
Basic

• 15+ years of experience executing product design for consumer, enterprise, or mobile user experiences
• 8+ years of experience managing and mentoring managers of individual contributor designers
• Bachelor's degree or above in a design-related discipline, or equivalent practical work experience

Preferred

• Executive experience in a senior design leadership role (VP or equivalent), successfully leading large-scale, cross-functional design organizations within a scaled SaaS environment
• Deep Product Design & Research expertise, spanning full customer lifecycles and interface touchpoints
• Proven track record of developing and executing design strategies for AI/ML-powered products, natural language user interfaces, or intelligent workspace applications
• Demonstrated familiarity with Product-Led Growth (PLG) frameworks and designing intuitive self-service customer acquisition or monetization paths
• Experience with rapid customer innovation, iterative design, and leveraging data and analytics to drive product design choices
• Proficiency facilitating design thinking workshops with cross-functional teams to frame complex problem areas and generate game-changing innovation opportunities
• Exceptional communication, presentation, and storytelling skills with the ability to influence C-level executives and clearly articulate complex design rationale to non-design audiences
• Possession of an online portfolio or work samples showcasing extensive experience leading teams to design large-scale B2C and B2B products

Wage Transparency
Pay for this position is based on a number of factors including geographic location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.
Based on applicable legislation, the below details pay ranges in the following locations:
California: $318,500.00 - $465,825.00 base salary
Washington, Maryland, New Jersey and New York (including NYC metro area): $292,900.00 - $425,975.00 base salary
This role is also eligible for the following:

• Bonus: Sales personnel are eligible for variable incentive pay dependent on their achievement of pre-established sales goals. Non-Sales roles are eligible for a company bonus plan, which is calculated as a percentage of eligible wages and dependent on company performance.
• Stock: This role is eligible to receive Restricted Stock Units (RSUs).

Global benefits provide options for the following:

• Paid Time Off: earned time off, as well as paid company holidays based on region
• Paid Parental Leave: take up to six months off with your child after birth, adoption or foster care placement
• Full Health Benefits Plans: options for 100% employer paid and minimum employee contribution health plans from day one of employment
• Retirement Plans: select retirement and pension programs with potential for employer contributions
• Learning and Development: options for coaching, online courses and education reimbursements
• Compassionate Care Leave: paid time off following the loss of a loved one and other life-changing events

Life at Docusign
Working here
Docusign is committed to building trust and making the world more agreeable for our employees, customers and the communities in which we live and work. You can count on us to listen, be honest, and try our best to do what's right, every day. At Docusign, everything is equal.
We each have a responsibility to ensure every team member has an equal opportunity to succeed, to be heard, to exchange ideas openly, to build lasting relationships, and to do the work of their life. Best of all, you will be able to feel deep pride in the work you do, because your contribution helps us make the world better than we found it. And for that, you'll be loved by us, our customers, and the world in which we live.
Accommodation
Docusign is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities in our job application procedures. If you need such an accommodation, or a religious accommodation, during the application process, please contact us at accommodations@docusign.com.
If you experience any issues, concerns, or technical difficulties during the application process please get in touch with our Talent organization at taops@docusign.com for assistance.
Applicant and Candidate Privacy Notice
States Not Eligible for Employment
This position is not eligible for employment in the following states: Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Equal Opportunity Employer
It's important to us that we build a talented team that is as diverse as our customers and where all employees feel a deep sense of belonging and thrive. We encourage great talent who bring a range of perspectives to apply for our open positions. Docusign is an Equal Opportunity Employer and makes hiring decisions based on experience, skill, aptitude and a can-do approach. We will not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, color, age, sex, religion, national origin, ancestry, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information, physical or mental disability, registered domestic partner status, caregiver status, marital status, veteran or military status, or any other legally protected category.
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