Vice President, Product Design and Research

What we’re looking for

SurveyMonkey is in the midst of reimagining its product to deliver deeper, more actionable insights for individuals and teams across the globe. As VP of Design & Research, you will lead the vision and execution for how customers experience our platform—across creation, collaboration, analysis, and beyond. You’ll oversee a multidisciplinary organization spanning Product Design, Content Design, Design Systems, and User Research. This leader will serve as a strategic partner to Product Management, elevating our understanding of user needs and helping the team sharpen focus on the highest-impact problems to solve. You’ll scale the craft of design and research, unify the user experience, and ensure customer insight is embedded into every phase of product development.

What you’ll be working on

• Craft a Vision for Experience: Define and drive the end-to-end UX and research strategy for our platform—delivered in fast, iterative phases that create meaningful customer value
• Build and Scale the Organization: Lead a world-class team across UX, content, systems, and research—nurturing deep expertise in each function while fostering a shared culture of creativity, inclusion, and impact
• Be a Strategic Product Partner: Work hand-in-hand with Product and Engineering to identify the right problems to solve—grounding the roadmap in user needs, research insights, and behavioral data
• Unify the Platform: Create design systems and experience patterns that tie together fragmented product surfaces into a cohesive, modern, multi-platform UX
• Accelerate Self-Serve Growth: Help design PLG-ready, insight-led experiences that drive activation, engagement, and expansion
• Lead with Innovation & Curiosity: Champion the use of AI/ML where it creates leverage—whether in user experience, research tooling, or design workflows
• Drive Alignment Across the Org: Represent Research & Design at the executive level—advocating for the customer and aligning cross-functional teams around experience quality as a competitive advantage

We’d love to hear from people with

• 12+ years of experience in product design and/or research, including 5+ years in senior leadership roles
• Experience in product-led growth (PLG) or self-service environments, with an understanding of how experience impacts activation, conversion, and retention
• Proven success leading multi-disciplinary UX and research organizations within complex SaaS or productivity platforms
• A strong foundation in interaction design, UX strategy, design systems, and research methodologies
• Experience unifying disconnected product surfaces into a coherent, scalable user experience across web and mobile
• A track record of helping product teams focus on the right problems—leveraging qualitative and quantitative insight to inform and shape strategy
• Technically current—actively explores and applies modern design, research, and AI tools to stay ahead of the curve
• Confident communicator and executive presence—comfortable influencing at all levels and aligning diverse stakeholders around the user perspective

The base pay provided for this position ranges from $289,000 / year - $340,000/ year depending on the geographic market and assuming a full-time schedule. Actual base pay is based on a number of factors including market location, job-related knowledge, education or training, skills, and experience.

Bonuses and commissions may also be offered as part of the total compensation package, in addition to a competitive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance; 401(k) retirement plan; flexible spending & health savings account; paid holidays; paid time off; employee assistance program; and other company benefits.

SurveyMonkey believes in-person collaboration is valuable for building relationships, fostering community, and enhancing our speed and execution in problem-solving and decision-making. As such, you will be required to work from a SurveyMonkey office up to 1 day per week.

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