Service Designer, Intelligence & Investigations

OpenAI · San Francisco

  • Senior
  • Full-time
  • $198,000 – $288,000
  • Posted 2026-10-30
  • Confirmed live on 1 November 2026

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Job description

ABOUT THE TEAM

The Intelligence and Investigations (I2) team provides intelligence to decision makers across OpenAI and investigates severe misuse of our products. I2’s work saves lives: we disrupt real-world violence, protect children, and prevent catastrophic harms from AI misuse. We draw on our investigations and in-depth analysis of a wide range of data sources to provide actionable quantitative and qualitative intelligence to OpenAI’s leadership.

Our analysts and investigators make sense of complex data to understand emerging risks and investigate severe misuse. They work closely with engineers who build tools that extend what human experts can see and do. The design of the investigative workflow shapes how effectively people can use those tools and act on what they learn.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We’re hiring a service designer to shape how investigative cases move through OpenAI, from the first signal through review and action. You’ll work alongside investigators to understand what each case requires and how the overall workflow shapes what investigators can accomplish.

You’ll bring that perspective to the people who shape investigative operations and the engineers who build the underlying systems. Together, you’ll decide where a change would help and see how it works in real cases.

IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL

- Work alongside investigators to understand how cases move across teams and systems. Consider what that process means for people at risk, people whose activity is under review, and the people responsible for acting on a finding.

- Combine what you learn from individual cases with operational data to decide where a change would help most and whether it calls for a change in the workflow, the tools, or both.

- Lead the cross-team work of mapping investigative workflows, designing improvements with the people who use and operate them, and putting agreed changes into practice.

- Guide engineering decisions about how investigative systems fit together to support the overall workflow.

- Follow changes into use. Look for whether they help investigators act in time, make well-supported decisions, and sustain demanding work.

WE'RE SEEKING SOMEONE WITH EXPERIENCE INCLUDING:

- 8+ years of relevant experience in service design or closely related roles, with demonstrated ownership of improvements to complex operational workflows from research through implementation and evaluation.

- A bachelor’s degree in Service Design, Interaction Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

- Strong qualitative research and synthesis skills, with the ability to combine insights from investigators and analysts with operational data to identify bottlenecks, inform priorities, and improve decision-making.

- Experience designing across internal tools, SME workflows, and systems, including how information, evidence, and decisions move between teams.

- Proven experience leading ambiguous projects across product, engineering, operations, and policy teams, translating evolving risks and needs into practical solutions.

- Experience using AI tools to support research synthesis, explore service design options, and prototype workflows, with sound judgment about sensitive information, output validation, and decisions that require human review.

- Clear written, verbal, and visual communication skills, with the ability to make complex workflows understandable, explain design decisions, navigate tradeoffs, and build alignment across technical and operational teams.

- A hands-on approach and the persistence to follow improvements through rollout, adoption, and evaluation, measuring their effect on investigation quality, timeliness, and team effectiveness.

YOU MIGHT THRIVE IN THIS ROLE IF YOU

- Have experience designing services around the needs of the people who use and run them.

- Enjoy learning how specialists work. You can draw on their different perspectives to understand a service that no single team sees in full.

- Have worked with operational and engineering teams to put a service design into practice. You’re comfortable discussing how a technical choice in one part of a workflow affects people elsewhere.

- Care about what happens after a design goes into use. You’re curious whether a change that helps one team also improves how a case moves through the full investigation workflow.

- Have experience working in sensitive operational environments

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 t

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