Experience Designer

Deeplocal creates inspiring moments for brands in the real and virtual worlds. We strategize, imagine, design, and fabricate ambitious experiences from concept to execution. Our work is driven by inventive technology, design, storytelling, craft, and most importantly, humans.

We’re seeking an early career Experience Designer to join our creative team, with a strong foundation in 3D, spatial, industrial, environmental, or experiential design. What matters most is that you can translate ideas into experiences people can see, touch, move through, and interact with.

This is not a traditional UI/UX role, nor is it a strict graphic, motion, or digital design position. Deeplocal’s work lives in physical space. We are looking for someone who can think beyond screens and communicate ideas through spatial, physical, interactive, and human-centered experiences.

Your portfolio should show strong creative thinking, visual taste, and evidence that you can work with physical interaction. That might mean environments, installations, objects, prototypes, interactive exhibits, spatial storytelling, event experiences, kinetic ideas, product-like concepts, or other work that shows how people engage with an idea in the real world.

Although remote employees will be considered, preference will be given to candidates in Pittsburgh, or those willing to relocate.

You care deeply about design quality, from the high-level concept to the smallest detail.

You are curious about how things work, how people move through spaces, and how physical, visual, digital, and interactive elements come together to create an experience.

You may have a primary creative discipline, but you are excited to work across disciplines and learn new tools, methods, and ways of making.

You enjoy participating in cross-functional teams, balancing aesthetic considerations with engineering, technology, fabrication, brand, and user experience.

You can communicate ideas visually and verbally, whether through sketches, diagrams, storyboards, renders, references, mockups, writing, prototypes, or decks.

You can handle multiple projects simultaneously, keeping track of deadlines and self-directing your workload and priorities.

You are aesthetically agile and can design for a variety of brands with different styles, tones, palettes, and voices.

You are eager to develop creative concepts that integrate thoughtful user experience, physical interaction, and strong storytelling.

You like getting your hands dirty, using rapid prototyping, low-fidelity models, tests, sketches, or mockups to prove out design concepts.

You have 2–4 years of experience, preferably in a creative agency, experiential studio, design studio, architecture/interiors practice, production environment, or similar setting.

Responsibilities

• Creative Concepting
• Collaborate with Creative Directors, Designers, Strategists, and Creative Technologists to develop concepts that are inventive, strategic, and meaningful for audiences.

• Physical + Spatial Thinking
• Contribute to ideas that live in physical space, including installations, environments, objects, interactive moments, exhibits, activations, and brand experiences.

• 3D + Spatial Design
• Translate creative concepts into physical form. Design environments, installations, objects, exhibits, and spatial experiences through sketching, 3D modeling, rendering, and prototyping. Explore scale, proportion, materiality, layout, sightlines, human interaction, and how an experience occupies and transforms a space.

• Experience Design
• Concept, develop, and diagram user experiences through storyboards, flowcharts, spatial diagrams, journey maps, or other tools. Help ensure the experience remains clear, compelling, and on brand.

• Visual + Verbal Communication
• Create compelling ways to communicate ideas, using the media that best fits the concept: sketches, references, renderings, motion tests, copy, diagrams, layouts, moodboards, decks, prototypes, or AI-assisted visualization.

• Cross-Discipline Collaboration
• Work closely with creative, technology, engineering, fabrication, and production teams to shape ideas that are ambitious but achievable.

• Bringing Ideas to Fruition
• Contribute across project phases, from early concepting and pitch development through design refinement, pre-production, and production.

• Creative Excellence
• Stay curious about culture, emerging technology, materials, interaction patterns, visual trends, and new tools. Bring references, ideas, and energy that help push the work beyond the expected.

Desired Skills

• Experiential Design
• Ability to think through physical experience: form, materiality, interaction, layout, flow, behavior, sequence, and user journey.

• Concept Development
• Ability to craft cross-discipline ideas and support them with visuals, language, references, and clear rationale.

• Spatial + Physical Communication
• Ability to show how an idea works in space. This could include sketches, diagrams, renderings, models, prototypes, storyboards, plans, sections, physical mockups, or other visual methods.

• Concept Visualization
• Ability to communicate abstract concepts through compelling visual mockups using whatever media you feel most comfortable with: sketching, rendering, Photoshop, motion tests, AI tools, deck design, 3D software, or other methods.

3D Modeling

Strong proficiency in at least one 3D modeling environment such as Rhino (strong preference), SketchUp, Blender, Cinema 4D, Fusion, or similar. You should be comfortable rapidly translating early concepts into spatial studies and developing selected ideas into clear, compelling 3D visualizations that communicate form, material, scale, interaction, and atmosphere.

• Design Craft
• Strong taste, strong composition, and an ability to make ideas feel considered, polished, and intentional.

• Interaction Awareness
• Interest in how people engage with physical experiences, objects, interfaces, environments, and technology.

Hybrid Candidates

Ideal candidates are those who can contribute across several disciplines. We’re a small, collaborative creative team with mostly multidisciplinary backgrounds. We value people who have a strong primary craft but are eager to stretch into unfamiliar territory.

Candidates may come from backgrounds such as:

Industrial Design

Spatial / Environmental Design

Architecture / Interiors

Exhibit Design

Experiential Design

3D Design / Visualization

Product Design

Additional strengths may include:

Interaction Design

Graphic Design

Motion / Animation

Art Direction

UX/UI

Strategy

Creative Technology

Regardless of your primary discipline, we need to see evidence that you can think about people, space, objects, interaction, and experience . The strongest portfolios will show how ideas become tangible, spatial, interactive, or experiential — not just how they look on a screen.

Portfolio Guidance

Please include work that demonstrates how you think, not just final outcomes.

We are especially interested in seeing:

Concepts for physical or interactive experiences

Environmental, spatial, installation, or exhibit work

Storyboards, diagrams, sketches, or process work

Prototypes, mockups, models, or tests

Motion or graphic systems applied to physical spaces

Digital concepts that connect to real-world behavior or interaction

Examples of how you communicate an idea to a team or client

Your portfolio does not need to show finished experiential work from major brands. Student work, self-directed projects, prototypes, speculative concepts, small installations, event work, spatial studies, or experimental projects are welcome if they show strong thinking and a clear relationship to physical experience.

The base salary range for this position at the time of this posting is $50,000 - $84,000 USD. Individual compensation varies based on job-related factors, including location, business needs, level of responsibility, experience, and qual