Product Designer, Higher Education

Join OpenAI’s Education team to help students and educators use AI in ways that are safe, useful, and empowering. This staff-level Product Designer role is based in San Francisco, CA (onsite) and focuses on shaping higher education experiences across colleges and universities, from core learning and course tools to campus-wide workflows.

In this position, you’ll set the design quality bar for higher education products and lead end-to-end work from early exploration through high-fidelity product direction. You will collaborate with research, engineering, safety, policy, and design to balance user needs, technical capabilities, and responsible deployment, especially for sensitive or high-trust interactions.

What you’ll do

• Set an exceptionally high standard for craft across OpenAI’s higher education experiences.
• Lead end-to-end design for products that support students, faculty, and campus staff to use AI safely, confidently, and productively.
• Create clear, trustworthy experiences for learning, course participation, and campus-wide use, including safety-critical moments.
• Develop zero-to-one higher education experiences spanning colleges and universities, educators, courses, collaborative work, and builder-style workflows.
• Translate emerging ideas into concepts, prototypes, and high-fidelity product experiences teams can evaluate and build.
• Partner across disciplines to balance user needs, technical constraints, and responsible deployment.
• Conduct and apply research with relevant users and partners to understand student, faculty, campus staff, and institutional needs.
• Build reusable patterns and principles that bring coherence across core learning, course, and campus-wide products as the area grows.

What you bring

• Exceptional interaction and visual design craft, with motivation to raise the quality of design across OpenAI.
• Generative problem-solving: explore broadly, iterate deeply, and turn ideas into concrete, polished product direction.
• Deep product and systems thinking paired with strong craft.
• Experience leading substantial, ambiguous, or zero-to-one product areas, shaping both vision and execution.
• Ability to design thoughtful experiences for sensitive, high-trust, or safety-critical contexts.
• Understanding of how to keep products engaging and intuitive while preserving safety and clarity.
• Capability to meet needs across multiple audiences, including students, faculty, campus staff, administrators, and institutional partners.
• Clear communication and hands-on collaboration across disciplines throughout product development.
• Energy to define how AI can support learning while serving higher education communities responsibly.

Compensation

USD 287,000 - 334,000 per yearly + Offers Equity

The base pay offered may vary depending on individualized factors. This role is at-will, and OpenAI reserves the right to modify base pay and other compensation components at any time based on individual performance, team or company results, or market conditions.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
• Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
• Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
• Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
• 13+ paid company holidays, plus multiple paid coordinated company office closures for focus and recharge; paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more as required by applicable state or local law)
• Mental health and wellness support
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
• Annual learning and development stipend
• Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
• Relocation support for eligible employees
• Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided

About the team

OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. The Education team focuses on making AI safe, useful, and empowering for students, faculty, and institutions. Work spans core learning experiences, course-based tools, and campus-wide product solutions, including exploration of how OpenAI’s technology can support colleges and universities, educators, teaching and research, and collaborative learning.