UI/UX Designer 

Who You Are:

AI2 is looking for a talented, creative individual to design software interfaces and graphic materials that demonstrate our cutting-edge AI research and enhance outside awareness of our institute and our mission.

Your Next Challenge:

This is a high-impact role where you will work closely with researchers, engineers, product managers, and others across the institute to design high-fidelity visual experiences for cutting edge AI research demonstrations and software. 

As a UI/UX Designer at AI2, your role will have autonomy, flexibility, and variety. You’ll be involved in a spectrum of design practices, from cultivating high-level design direction for the institute to the specifics of software interfaces. Your responsibilities will include everything from designing visualizations that help us understand the inner workings of complicated machine learning models to crafting new layouts, branding, and illustrations for our projects. This role is a unique opportunity to help our team develop solid design practices and direction, with ample room for self-direction and exploration as you determine how to be most impactful.

To get a more concrete idea of the type of work you’ll be doing, take a look at some of our existing projects and interfaces:

• The allenai.org website, the main information hub for the wider world about our institute and its mission.
• Our collection of demos built to showcase AI2’s unique interactive models and datasets
• The Computer Vision Explorer, a suite of interactive demos illustrating the state-of-the-field for computer vision.
• The demos and website for AllenNLP, an open-source toolkit for NLP research.
• The AI2 leaderboards, where we encourage collaboration on common AI tasks by transparently sharing recent approaches and advances.

What You’ll Need:

We’re looking for someone with a passion for creating elegant, effective end-user experiences. Our organization offers high autonomy and flexibility; you should be organized, self-starting, and comfortable with proactively navigating ambiguity.

Our research and engineering teams iterate rapidly and release often. You should love creating simple solutions to complex problems. You should be able to effectively communicate design principles and your specific design ideas to non-designers, and take critical feedback in stride. Startup experience is a plus.

A great candidate for this role will have:

• 2+ years of experience in interface design
• A portfolio of previously designed usable, beautiful software products
• A general understanding of web technologies and experience designing for a diverse range of client devices and mediums
• A passion for user experience and creating simple, smart interfaces
• Experience conducting user research to test assumptions and define the best solutions to user problems
• Experience working with engineers to design and build successful features and products
• Proficiency with a particular tool for creating mockups (Figma, Invision Studio, Photoshop, Sketch)
• Experience developing and extending existing style guides and branding materials
• Experience designing print materials and working with print vendors

Who We Are:

The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence is a non-profit research institute in Seattle founded by Paul Allen and headed by Professor Oren Etzioni. The core mission of AI2 is to contribute to humanity through high-impact research in artificial intelligence. 

In addition to AI2’s core mission, we also aim to contribute to humanity through our treatment of each member of the AI2 Team. Some highlights are:

• We are a learning organization – because everything AI2 does is ground-breaking, we are learning every day. Similarly, through weekly AI2 Academy lectures, a wide variety of world-class AI experts as guest speakers, and our commitment to your personal on-going education, AI2 is place where you will have opportunities to continue learning alongside your coworkers. 
• We value diversity - We seek to hire, support, and promote people from all genders, ethnicities, and all levels of experience regardless of age. We particularly encourage applications from women, non-binary individuals, people of color, members of the LGBTQA+ community, and people with disabilities of any kind. 
• We value inclusion - We understand the value that people's individual experiences and perspectives can bring to an organization, and we are building a culture in which all voices are heard, respected and considered.
• We emphasize a healthy work/life balance – we believe our team members are happiest and most productive when their work/life balance is optimized. While we value powerful research results which drive our mission forward, we also value dinner with family, weekend time, and vacation time. We offer generous paid vacation and sick leave as well as family leave.
• We are collaborative and transparent – we consider ourselves a team, all moving with a common purpose. We are quick to cheer our successes, and even quicker to share and jointly problem solve our failures.
• We are in Seattle – and our office is on the water! We have mountains, we have lakes, we have four seasons, we bike to work, we have a vibrant theater scene, and we have so much else. We even have kayaks for you to paddle right outside our front door. We welcome interest from applicants from outside of the United States.
• We are friendly – chances are you will like every one of the 100+ (and growing) people who work here. We do. 

AI2 is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. 

If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at recruiting@allenai.org or you may call us at 206-548-5600.