VP, Product Design

COMPANY OVERVIEW

Zuora was founded to help companies navigate one of the most fundamental shifts in modern business: the move from one-time transactions to recurring, usage-based and increasingly complex monetization models. Today, that shift is accelerating as companies across industries rethink how they package, price and deliver value in an AI-driven world. Zuora sits at the center of this transformation.

The company provides a cloud-based platform that enables organizations to manage the full quote-to-cash lifecycle, including pricing, billing, collections, payments and revenue recognition. Its breadth across the quote-to-cash stack, combined with its ability to handle highly complex pricing models, has positioned Zuora as a trusted partner to finance organizations and a mission-critical platform for modern monetization.

The market is now entering another period of fundamental change. AI and agentic technologies are reshaping how software is built, how customers interact with products and how companies create and monetize value. Zuora has an opportunity not simply to add AI to its existing products, but to rethink the product experience and the way customers interact with software in an AI-native world.

This is a critical inflection point for Zuora. The company has a strong product foundation, deep enterprise relationships and significant domain expertise. At the same time, there is an opportunity to reimagine how the product experience works when AI can understand intent, make recommendations, take action and increasingly operate on a customer's behalf.

Zuora is seeking a VP, Product Design to play a central role in defining that future. This leader will help shape the next generation of Zuora's product experience and establish a design model built for an AI-native and increasingly agentic world.

ROLE & RESPONSIBILITIES

The VP, Design will lead the evolution of design at Zuora as the company transforms toward an AI-native product and operating model. This leader will partner closely with Product, Engineering, AI and executive leadership to rethink how customers interact with Zuora—not simply by improving existing interfaces, but by exploring fundamentally different ways software can understand intent, guide decisions and take action.

Define the design vision for an AI-native product experience. Establish a clear design vision and point of view for how Zuora products should work in an AI-driven and agentic world. Help the organization move beyond traditional user-interface thinking toward experiences built around customer intent, intelligent assistance, automation and outcomes.

Help define what the next generation of enterprise software looks like. Challenge existing assumptions about how customers should interact with complex enterprise applications. Explore when customers should interact directly with the product, when AI should act on their behalf, and where the right balance exists between automation, human control, transparency and trust.

Design for agentic experiences. Establish design principles and patterns for products in which AI agents can understand context, make recommendations, execute workflows and take actions across complex quote-to-cash processes. Create experiences that make agent behavior understandable, predictable and controllable while maintaining customer confidence.

Partner with Product, Engineering and AI to transform how products are built. Work at the intersection of design, product management, engineering, data and AI to establish a more integrated approach to product development. Help teams move from sequential handoffs toward highly collaborative, iterative product development built around experimentation, learning and measurable outcomes.

Build a modern design organization. Evolve the design organization, capabilities and operating model required for an AI-native company. Establish high standards for interaction design, product thinking, systems thinking and customer experience while developing a culture that encourages experimentation and challenges conventional approaches.

Create a coherent experience across the Zuora platform. Establish design principles and systems that create consistency across products while allowing teams to move quickly. Simplify complex workflows and make powerful enterprise capabilities more intuitive, accessible and intelligent.

Bring the customer into the design process. Develop deep understanding of customers and their workflows through direct engagement, research, observation and quantitative and qualitative insight. Ensure that AI-enabled experiences solve real customer problems rather than simply demonstrate new technology.

Establish responsible design principles for AI. Help define how Zuora should approach trust, transparency, explainability, human oversight, permissions, errors and recovery in AI-enabled and agentic experiences. Ensure that the experience reflects the level of confidence customers need when AI is making decisions or taking actions within critical business processes.

Partner with executive and business leadership. Serve as a senior voice on customer experience and product strategy, bringing design into the earliest stages of strategic thinking rather than treating it as a downstream execution function. Help the organization understand how design can become a source of differentiation and competitive advantage.

IDEAL CANDIDATE CHARACTERISTICS

The ideal candidate is a highly accomplished design leader who has helped organizations rethink products, experiences and operating models during periods of significant technological change. This is not a role for someone who is primarily focused on visual design, design systems or optimizing an established product experience.

We are looking for a design thinker and builder who is genuinely excited about what AI changes about the product experience.

The successful candidate will have a strong track record leading product design organizations within sophisticated technology companies and will bring exceptional judgment around interaction design, customer experience and product strategy.

They will have demonstrated the ability to lead design through significant product or organizational transformation and to establish a compelling design vision while bringing an organization along with it.

Experience designing AI-native or agentic experiences is highly desirable, but we are equally interested in leaders who have demonstrated the intellectual curiosity and product judgment to think beyond today's established patterns. We do not expect someone to have a complete playbook for agentic enterprise software. We want someone capable of helping write it.

The ideal candidate will bring strong experience partnering with Product and Engineering leaders and will be comfortable engaging deeply in technology, architecture and the implications of AI on product design. They should be able to move fluidly between customer problems, product strategy, interaction models and the technical realities required to bring those experiences to life.

They will understand that AI changes more than the interface. It changes the relationship between the customer and the product: from navigating screens and features toward expressing intent and achieving outcomes. They will have a point of view on how that shift should influence interaction models, information architecture, workflows, autonomy and human control.

The successful candidate will be highly customer-centric and comfortable spending significant time with customers, understanding complex enterprise workflows and translating those insights into compelling product experiences.

They will be an exceptional communicator and storyteller, capable of articulating a design vision that inspires designers, product managers, engineers and executives alike. They will have the executive presence to challenge established thinking while building the trust necessary to create meaningful organizational change.

They will have a demonstrated ability to attract, develop and retain exceptional design talent and to build organizations capable of operating with both creativity and accountability.

Experience in enterprise SaaS, complex workflow products, platforms or products serving sophisticated business users is strongly preferred.

Most importantly, this leader should be energized by ambiguity. We are not looking for someone to inherit a finished design strategy. We are looking for someone who wants to help define what design—and the product experience itself—should become in an AI-native world.

The opportunity in one sentence

We are not looking for someone to make today's products look better; we're looking for a design leader who can help us rethink what the product experience becomes when AI can understand intent, reason, act and deliver outcomes.

Benefits

Zuora offers a comprehensive total rewards package designed to support ZEOs’ wellbeing, growth, and flexibility. While specific offerings may vary by country, we typically provide:

• Competitive compensation, variable bonus and performance-based reward opportunities, and retirement programs
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Generous, flexible time off, plus paid holidays, wellness days, and a company-wide year-end break
• Paid parental leave (including fully paid leave for eligible ZEOs, subject to local policy)
• Learning & development stipend to support ongoing growth
• Opportunities to volunteer and give back, including charitable donation matching where available
• Mental wellbeing resources and support

*Benefits may vary by location; details will be shared during the interview process

#ZEOLife at Zuora

ZEOs (our employees) are empowered to take ownership, challenge the status quo, and make a real impact. We:

• Collaborate deeply across teams and regions
• Learn constantly and iterate often
• Build an inclusive, high-performance culture where people feel inspired, connected, and valued

Our Commitment to an Inclusive Workplace

Think, be and do you.
At Zuora, different perspectives, experiences, and contributions matter — everyone counts.

Zuora is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to creating an inclusive environment for all. We do not discriminate on the basis of, and consider individuals seeking employment with Zuora without regard to, race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, reproductive health decisions, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, political views or activity, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

We encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply. Applicants in need of special assistance or accommodation during the interview process or in accessing our website may contact us by sending an email to [email protected] (or local equivalent, where applicable).