Product Designer, Higher Education

OpenAI • San Francisco, CA

1d • $287,000 - $334,000

About The Position

OpenAI’s Education team is focused on making AI safe, useful, and empowering for students, faculty, and institutions. Its work spans core learning experiences, course-based tools, and campus-wide product solutions, while exploring how OpenAI technology can support colleges and universities, educators, teaching and research, and collaborative learning.

The staff-level Product Designer will shape how students and educators engage with AI and help define OpenAI’s emerging higher education experiences. The role spans immediate product needs and zero-to-one opportunities, including core learning and course experiences and campus-wide tools for teaching, research, and collaboration. It requires exceptional interaction and visual design craft paired with deep product thinking, translating complex questions around safety, learning, and institutional needs into clear, trustworthy, and engaging experiences.

The designer will move from early exploration to concrete, high-fidelity product direction and partner closely with product, engineering, research, safety, policy, and design. The role includes establishing durable patterns for a still-emerging space and helping define how AI can support higher education communities responsibly.

Requirements

• Exceptional interaction and visual design craft.
• Strong product and systems thinking.
• Experience leading substantial, ambiguous, or zero-to-one product areas and shaping both vision and execution.
• Ability to design thoughtful experiences for sensitive, high-trust, or safety-critical contexts.
• Ability to create products that are engaging and intuitive without compromising safety or clarity.
• Ability to navigate the needs of multiple audiences, including students, faculty, campus staff, administrators, and institutional partners.
• Clear communication and ability to build alignment across disciplines while remaining hands-on throughout product development.
• Motivation to raise the quality of design across OpenAI.
• Ability to explore broadly, iterate deeply, and turn ideas into concrete, polished product direction.
• Interest in defining how AI can support learning while serving higher education communities responsibly.

Responsibilities

• Establish an exceptionally high standard for craft across OpenAI’s higher education experiences.
• Lead end-to-end design for products that help students, faculty, and campus staff use AI safely, confidently, and productively.
• Design clear, trustworthy experiences for learning, course participation, and campus-wide use, including sensitive or high-trust interactions.
• Shape zero-to-one higher education experiences spanning colleges and universities, educators, courses, collaborative work, and builder-style workflows.
• Turn emerging ideas into compelling concepts, prototypes, and high-fidelity product experiences that teams can evaluate and build.
• Partner with research, engineering, product, safety, policy, and design to balance user needs, technical capabilities, and responsible deployment.
• Conduct and apply research with relevant users and partners to understand the needs of students, faculty, campus staff, and institutions.
• Develop reusable patterns and principles that create coherence across core learning, course, and campus-wide products as the area grows.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed