Product Designer, Physical Engineering

About the Team

The Physical Engineering team sits within OpenAI's Enterprise Verticals organization. We're exploring how frontier AI can help people design, simulate, and build better physical products - shortening development cycles, improving product performance, and expanding what engineering teams can accomplish. We're building experiences within ChatGPT and integrations with tools such as CAD, eCAD, CAE, and simulation software to support engineers from early concepts through design, validation, and preparation for production. We operate as a small founding team, working directly with customers and closely with research, product, data science, and forward-deployed engineering.

About the Role

We're looking for a highly autonomous Product Designer to become the first dedicated designer on the Physical Engineering team. You'll help define this product area from its earliest stages - shaping what we build, how it works, and how design operates within the team. This is a hands-on, zero-to-one role for someone with a founder's mindset. You'll work deeply with engineers and customers to understand complex technical workflows, identify valuable opportunities, and turn emerging AI capabilities into intuitive, trustworthy products. You'll move between product strategy, interaction design, prototyping, research, and detailed execution, often making decisions with incomplete information. While your initial focus may be Physical Engineering, your work could extend across Enterprise Verticals as the design function grows. You'll help establish reusable patterns and a high bar for craft across specialized AI products. This role is based in our San Francisco HQ. We offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

• Define the product and design vision for AI-powered physical-engineering experiences.
• Lead design from customer discovery and early prototyping through detailed execution, launch, and iteration.
• Create intuitive interfaces that help engineers understand, inspect, and refine complex designs, simulations, and model outputs.
• Work directly with mechanical, electrical, and other physical engineers to understand their tools, constraints, and workflows.
• Partner closely with product, engineering, research, data science, and forward-deployed teams to translate emerging AI capabilities into practical products.
• Prototype new interaction models for visual, spatial, and technically complex work.
• Balance speed and exploration with a high bar for interaction design, visual craft, reliability, and user trust.
• Establish foundational design patterns and practices that can scale across Physical Engineering and other enterprise verticals.
• Operate independently, identify the highest-leverage opportunities, and bring clarity to an exceptionally early and ambiguous product space.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have independently led substantial zero-to-one products from early exploration through launch.
• Bring exceptional product judgment, interaction design, and visual craft to complex professional software.
• Are highly autonomous and comfortable defining both the problem and the path forward.
• Think and operate like a founder: learning quickly, making pragmatic decisions, and remaining accountable for outcomes.
• Enjoy working directly with highly technical users and translating specialized workflows into clear product experiences.
• Can move fluidly between long-term vision, systems thinking, rapid prototyping, and detailed execution.
• Build alignment through compelling prototypes, clear narratives, and close cross-functional collaboration.
• Are energized by unfamiliar domains and can develop enough technical depth to make thoughtful design decisions.
• Want to help establish the design culture and foundations of a new team.

Particularly relevant experience includes:

• Designing CAD, CAE, eCAD, simulation, chip-design, manufacturing, or other engineering software.
• Building interactive tools for visual, spatial, data-intensive, or technically complex workflows.
• Designing professional or enterprise products that integrate with established tools and systems.
• Working as a founding designer, early startup designer, or first designer within a new product area.
• Designing AI-powered products and evaluating whether their outputs are understandable, useful, and reliable.