Creative Technology Lead

IDEO•Chicago, IL

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

IDEO Chicago is seeking a Creative Technology Lead to use technology to imagine and create products, services, and experiences that people love. The role sits at the intersection of design and technology, using software, AI, hardware, and emerging tools as creative materials for exploration, invention, and making. It is a hands-on position for a curious maker who adapts technology to the challenge, learns quickly, experiments, and considers both what a technology means and how it works. The work stays focused on people’s needs and uses technology in service of those needs. The Creative Technology Lead brings a technologist’s perspective to clients and interdisciplinary teams, helping them navigate what is desirable and newly possible. Depending on the project, the person may lead a team or contribute as a team member. The role involves rapid prototyping, exploring emerging technologies and translating their capabilities, limitations, and implications into opportunities, and inspiring teams through making and experimentation. It also contributes to the evolution of IDEO’s design practice and participates in its emerging technology community. The position offers opportunities to work on breakthrough products, services, and experiences across industries such as health, financial services, and mobility; collaborate with a multidisciplinary Chicago studio; and shape end-to-end innovation from early insight to market activation. The role is hybrid, with Chicago-based team members expected to work in the studio on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, with flexibility based on client travel, project needs, and deliverables.

Requirements

A strong track record of experimenting, prototyping, and building with a broad range of technologies, including products or experiences where AI plays a meaningful role.
Experience shipping real products and understanding what it takes to bring technology-enabled ideas to market.
Fluency in software and digital prototyping, with the ability to move from sketches and prototypes to proofs of concept and functioning experiences.
Demonstrated curiosity and ability to acquire new skills, learn new tools, and explore emerging technologies.
Ability to balance technical rigor and imagination, understanding real constraints while creatively exploring things that have not yet been built.

Nice To Haves

Experience across software and hardware, including electronics, sensors, physical computing, fabrication, robotics, or connected products.
Experience in consulting, innovation, R&D, creative technology, or other environments where problems and tools change frequently.
Thoughtful perspectives on how AI is changing software design, based on hands-on experience.
A habit of building things out of curiosity about whether they can be built.

Responsibilities

Bring a technologist’s perspective to help clients and interdisciplinary teams navigate the intersection of what is desirable and newly possible.
Lead a team and project or contribute as a member of a project team.
Rapidly prototype products, services, and experiences using software, AI, hardware, physical computing, and other relevant tools.
Explore emerging technologies and translate their capabilities, limitations, and implications into meaningful opportunities for people and organizations.
Inspire teams through making by introducing new tools, unconventional approaches, and experiments that expand design approaches and possible solutions.
Contribute to the evolution of IDEO’s design practice by exploring how new technologies are changing the relationships between design, prototyping, development, and delivery.
Participate in IDEO’s broader emerging technology community alongside designers, engineers, data scientists, and others.