OpenAI

Lead Industrial Designer, Robotics

OpenAI$120K — $180K *
Consumer Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5-7 years of experience in industrial design or related fields
  • Proven track record in designing consumer electronics or robotics products
  • Strong portfolio showcasing industrial design and product execution
  • Experience creating production-ready digital assets and CAD geometry
  • Proficiency in design tools like Alias, NX, or Rhino

Responsibilities

  • Define and evolve the visual identity and form language of robotic products
  • Create sketches and prototypes to communicate design concepts
  • Develop production-intent geometry for engineering integration
  • Collaborate with teams to translate product goals into design
  • Drive design decisions balancing aesthetics and functionality
  • Conduct design reviews focusing on form and usability
  • Support rapid concept iteration through prototyping

Benefits

  • Relocation assistance for new employees
  • In-office collaboration 4 days a week
  • Opportunity to define design for innovative robotic products
  • Collaboration with leadership and engineering teams
  • Central role in shaping user experience for new technologies
Full Job Description
About the Role

We are seeking a Lead Product & Industrial Designer to help define the visual identity, form language, and physical expression of our robotic products. You will work closely with leadership, product, and engineering teams to shape how our systems look, feel, and communicate their capabilities through industrial design.

This role spans concept development, industrial design, surface development, and product definition. You will help establish a cohesive design language across robotic platforms while balancing aesthetics, usability, manufacturability, and engineering constraints. Unlike traditional industrial design roles that focus primarily on concept generation and visualization, you will be expected to create production-intent digital assets and geometry that can be directly integrated into engineering workflows.

You will play a central role in shaping the physical experience of future robotic systems and ensuring that design intent remains intact from concept through implementation.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. This role will be expected to be in office 4 days per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will
  • Define and evolve the visual identity, form language, and design principles of robotic products and supporting hardware systems.
  • Create sketches, renderings, digital concepts, and physical prototypes to communicate design intent and explore new product directions.
  • Develop production-intent surface geometry and digital assets that can be integrated directly into engineering CAD workflows.
  • Partner closely with product, engineering, and leadership teams to translate product goals into compelling physical designs.
  • Drive industrial design decisions across the product development lifecycle, balancing aesthetics, functionality, manufacturability, and system constraints.
  • Collaborate with mechanical engineers to ensure design intent is preserved throughout development and manufacturing.
  • Conduct design reviews and provide feedback on proportion, surface quality, form, fit-and-finish, and overall product experience.
  • Support rapid concept exploration and iteration through physical and digital prototyping.
  • Establish and maintain design standards, workflows, and best practices for industrial design and surface development.
  • Help define the long-term design vision for future robotic products and hardware platforms.


You might thrive in this role if you
  • Have exceptional taste and strong intuition for proportion, form, surface quality, and physical product design.
  • Enjoy collaborating closely with engineers and can comfortably navigate both design and technical constraints.
  • Are capable of moving from ambiguous product concepts to detailed, production-ready design assets.
  • Think systematically about how design choices influence usability, manufacturability, and product perception.
  • Are excited about helping define the identity of an entirely new class of products.


Preferred qualifications
  • Extensive experience designing consumer electronics, robotics products, transportation products, advanced hardware systems, or other highly refined physical products.
  • Strong portfolio demonstrating excellence in industrial design, form development, visual storytelling, and physical product execution.
  • Experience creating CAD geometry, Class A surfaces, or production-intent digital assets that can be directly consumed by engineering teams.
  • Proficiency with industry-standard design and surface development tools such as Alias, NX, Rhino, Blender, Gravity Sketch, or equivalent.
  • Experience working closely with hardware engineering teams from concept development through manufacturing.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory consisting of the for-profit corporation OpenAI LP and its parent company, the non-profit OpenAI Inc. The company was founded in 2015 by a group of technology leaders, including Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, and John Schulman. OpenAI's mission is to develop and promote friendly AI for the betterment of humanity. The company has developed a number of cutting-edge AI technologies, including GPT-3, a language processing system that can generate human-like text. OpenAI has received funding from a number of high-profile investors, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist Peter Thiel.
Learn more about OpenAI
Size
100 employees
Industry
Founded
2015

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