Designer, Research and Experiments

About the Team

OpenAI didn’t begin as a traditional company. It began as an idea: that artificial intelligence could be developed in a way that benefits everyone. As a creative team, our role is to help make sure the work behind that idea is understood, as it leaves the lab and meets the world.

This company works at the frontier of intelligence. Like any frontier, it’s unfinished, constantly shifting, and still being explored. Our job is to stay close to that uncertainty and help shape how this story gets told, in a way that feels grounded and human. We do this through campaigns, launches, films, brand systems, and work that doesn’t fit neatly into any of those categories yet. This team is for people who want to help shape something from the beginning.

About the Role

We’re looking for a Designer to lead hands-on design for research and experimental creative work. You’ll help define a project’s visual direction, build prototypes, and carry promising ideas through to finished work across research communications, demos, and experiences.

This role combines strong graphic design craft with an experimental approach to making. You’ll work closely with researchers, creative leads, and production partners, bringing structure to open-ended briefs and helping collaborators turn technical concepts into work people can understand and engage with.

In this role, you will

• Partner with researchers and creative leads to define the design problem, identify the essential story, and establish a clear visual direction.

• Translate research concepts, methods, and findings into accurate visual narratives, checking interpretations and limitations with subject-matter experts.

• Develop concepts and prototypes for experiments, demos, and experiences, using iterative making to test and refine creative possibilities.

• Design across web, editorial, social, film, and experiential formats, maintaining a coherent visual idea as work moves between media.

• Build reusable graphic systems, templates, and design patterns that support research communications and make future work easier to develop.

• Guide design contributions from collaborators, give specific feedback, and maintain a high standard of typography, composition, and information design.

• Own design delivery for complex workstreams, align priorities with partners, and adapt scope as research findings and production requirements evolve.

You might thrive in this role if you have

• 8+ years of relevant experience

• A portfolio demonstrating senior-level design judgment, strong conceptual thinking, and polished work that makes complex ideas understandable.

• Experience shaping visual direction and delivering projects from early exploration through final production, with substantial hands-on contribution.

• Strong graphic design fundamentals and experience creating flexible visual systems across digital or physical applications.

• An experimental practice that includes prototyping, testing approaches, and learning new tools or formats as the idea requires.

• The curiosity to understand unfamiliar research, ask precise questions, and preserve technical meaning rather than simplify it inaccurately.

• The ability to guide collaborators, explain design decisions, synthesize feedback, and maintain momentum when a brief is still developing.

• Experience with research storytelling, creative technology, interactive or experiential work, motion systems, or AI-assisted making is especially relevant.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experience

Responsibilities

• Partner with researchers and creative leads to define the design problem, identify the essential story, and establish a clear visual direction.
• Translate research concepts, methods, and findings into accurate visual narratives, checking interpretations and limitations with subject-matter experts.
• Develop concepts and prototypes for experiments, demos, and experiences, using iterative making to test and refine creative possibilities.
• Design across web, editorial, social, film, and experiential formats, maintaining a coherent visual idea as work moves between media.
• Build reusable graphic systems, templates, and design patterns that support research communications and make future work easier to develop.
• Guide design contributions from collaborators, give specific feedback, and maintain a high standard of typography, composition, and information design.
• Own design delivery for complex workstreams, align priorities with partners, and adapt scope as research findings and production requirements evolve.

Requirements

• 8+ years of relevant experience
• A portfolio demonstrating senior-level design judgment, strong conceptual thinking, and polished work that makes complex ideas understandable.
• Experience shaping visual direction and delivering projects from early exploration through final production, with substantial hands-on contribution.
• Strong graphic design fundamentals and experience creating flexible visual systems across digital or physical applications.
• An experimental practice that includes prototyping, testing approaches, and learning new tools or formats as the idea requires.
• The curiosity to understand unfamiliar research, ask precise questions, and preserve technical meaning rather than simplify it inaccurately.
• The ability to guide collaborators, explain design decisions, synthesize feedback, and maintain momentum when a brief is still developing.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with research storytelling, creative technology, interactive or experiential work, motion systems, or AI-assisted making is especially relevant.