Motion Designer

OpenAI, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a Motion Designer to translate complex ideas into clear, engaging motion across films, launches, demos, and other communications. You’ll work within the creative team, partnering with Research, Brand, and production teams to shape work from early concepts through final delivery.

This hands-on role requires strong motion craft, curiosity about unfamiliar subjects, and the ability to find compelling visual approaches as briefs evolve.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in motion design across films, campaigns, launches, or narrative work.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating design judgment and animation craft.
• Ability to carry an idea from concept through finished execution.

Responsibilities

• Develop motion concepts for research stories with partners and experts.
• Design and produce high-quality 2D and 3D motion for films, launches, demos, and supporting content.
• Apply and extend OpenAI’s visual and motion language, balancing consistency with story needs.
• Take work from exploration to final delivery through animation, compositing, and delivery.
• Collaborate with designers, filmmakers, editors, producers, and researchers to bring a motion perspective early.
• Translate technical concepts into visual sequences accessible to a broad audience.
• Work with producers to scope projects and manage dependencies and timelines.
• Present work and incorporate feedback from partners.
• Develop reusable assets, templates, and workflows.

Skills

Motion design

After Effects

Cinema 4D

Editing/Compositing

Figma

Typography

Tools

After Effects

Cinema 4D

Job description

About the Team

OpenAI didn’t begin as a traditional company. It began as an idea: that artificial intelligence could be developed in a way that benefits everyone. As a creative team, our role is to help make sure the work behind that idea is understood, as it leaves the lab and meets the world.

This company works at the frontier of intelligence. Like any frontier, it’s unfinished, constantly shifting, and still being explored. Our job is to stay close to that uncertainty and help shape how this story gets told, in a way that feels grounded and human. We do this through campaigns, launches, films, brand systems, and work that doesn’t fit neatly into any of those categories yet. This team is for people who want to help shape something from the beginning.

About the Role

OpenAI is seeking a Motion Designer to help tell the stories behind our research. You’ll translate complex ideas, emerging capabilities, and the work of our researchers into clear, engaging motion across films, launches, demos, and other communications.

Working within the creative team, you’ll partner with Research, Brand, and production teams to shape work from early concepts through final delivery. You’ll help determine what a story needs visually, explore different approaches, and bring those ideas to life through thoughtful design and animation.

This is a hands‑on role for someone with strong motion craft, curiosity about unfamiliar subjects, and the ability to find a compelling visual approach when the brief is still taking shape. You’ll contribute to how OpenAI’s research is expressed in motion, developing original work and reusable approaches that help the team build on what it learns.

In this role, you will:

• Develop motion concepts for research stories, working with creative partners and subject matter experts to understand the ideas and identify how best to communicate them.
• Design and produce high-quality 2D and 3D motion for research films, launches, demos, and supporting content.
• Apply and extend OpenAI’s visual and motion language, balancing consistency with the needs of each story.
• Take work from visual exploration, storyboards, and animatics through animation, compositing, and final delivery.
• Collaborate closely with designers, filmmakers, editors, producers, and researchers, bringing a motion perspective into the creative process early.
• Translate technical or abstract concepts into visual sequences that are accessible to a broad audience while preserving the meaning of the underlying work.
• Work with producers to scope projects, communicate dependencies, and maintain a high standard of craft as priorities and timelines evolve.
• Present work clearly, explain creative decisions, and incorporate feedback from creative and technical partners.
• Develop reusable assets, templates, and workflows where they improve quality and make recurring work easier to produce.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• 7+ years of experience in motion design across films, campaigns, launches, or other narrative work.
• A strong portfolio demonstrating design judgment, animation craft, and the ability to carry an idea from concept through finished execution.
• The ability to explore an open-ended brief, propose a clear creative direction, and refine it through collaboration.
• Proficiency in After Effects and experience with Cinema 4D or comparable 3D tools, alongside editing and compositing workflows.
• Comfort working in Figma and sharing work across design and production teams.
• A strong understanding of typography, composition, timing, rhythm, and visual storytelling.
• Experience making complex or unfamiliar subjects understandable through design and motion.
• Experience working with subject matter experts and incorporating technical feedback without losing clarity or creative quality.
• Curiosity about AI and research, and a willingness to learn enough about a subject to represent it thoughtfully.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general‑purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s ... Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy

At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.