Product Design Manager

About the Team OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. The Application Technology team works across research, engineering, product, and design to bring OpenAI’s technology to the world. We serve a diverse audience of users who are already using ChatGPT, Codex, API, etc, daily in their lives and work. We seek to learn from deployment and distribute the benefits of AI, while ensuring that this powerful tool is used responsibly and safely. Safety is more important to us than unfettered growth. About the Role Design plays a critical role here. To succeed in our mission, it’s crucial that we make our technology intuitive and accessible. We’re hiring a design manager to lead products that are easy to use, beautiful, and push the boundaries of what’s possible. As an early team leader, you’ll have a huge part in shaping our product direction and design culture. In this role, you’ll collaborate closely with a team of product designers and cross-functional partners to craft the Foundations experiences of today and tomorrow. You’ll lead product designers working on the end-to-end design of new features and improvements across enterprise and consumer mission critical experiences. You’ll help chart our course into the future as we evolve our technology, product, and design paradigms. This role is based in our San Francisco HQ. We offer relocation assistance to new employees. In this role, you will: - Lead design and help shape product direction across OpenAI’s Foundational Systems across consumer and enterprise on Payments, Identity & Access, and the developer/research tools that power our ecosystem - Set a high bar for design quality, delivering clear, cohesive experiences that build trust - Manage and grow a team of product designers, fostering a strong culture of craft, ownership, and performance - Drive consistency and alignment across complex, interconnected systems - Identify and prioritize shared capabilities to unlock scale across the OpenAI ecosystem - Partner closely with engineering, product, and research to shape both long-term strategy and near-term execution - Use research and insights to deeply understand users and continuously improve the product You might thrive in this role if you: - Have a passion for turning complexity into usable, beautiful experiences - Are a strong design leader comfortable with bringing your point of view to a team - Can coach a team to ship fast while elevating craft and quality. You’re comfortable diving into the details (pixels, edge cases, content) and guiding your team to maintain that level of care as they ship quickly. - Are ready to rethink the fundamentals from first principles. Many UI patterns were built for a different era and you’re excited to question those assumptions and design interactions that feel native to AI. - Have a strong portfolio showcasing excellence in designing and shipping at scale, with strengths in user-centered thinking, craft, systems design, and innovative product patterns. - Have 5+ years of experience managing and growing high-performing product design teams (5–10 designers), with a focus on both craft and systems thinking - Are comfortable operating across multiple altitudes- from defining design details to shaping system architecture and long-term strategy - Have experience working on technical, highly cross-functional products, partnering closely with engineering, product, and infrastructure teams. In general, you are excited about building collaborative relationships with many partners! - Are a systems thinker, able to bring clarity and cohesion across fragmented surfaces and evolve them into unified, scalable experiences. - Are excited by ambiguous, high-leverage problems and can turn complexity into clear, actionable direction - Possess excellent communication and storytelling skills, and can align teams around a shared vision - Get excited about shaping how AI-first products should look and behav