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 a junior 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, and it is not 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 qualifications. We offer a competitive benefits package.

 

You don’t need to match every skill on this list to apply—we welcome applicants with a variety of experiences.

If you require a reasonable accommodation during the interview process, please email us at hr@deeplocal.com

About Deeplocal

Deeplocal is an internationally-recognized innovation studio based in Pittsburgh, PA. Our team includes experts in marketing, engineering, design, and fabrication who collaborate to develop never-seen-before physical experiences for brand clients.

Deeplocal has been behind some of advertising’s most talked about campaigns: the Netflix Switch, Google Photos Pay With A Photo, and the Nike Chalkbot. From creating a mind-controlled bike that allowed riders to shift with their thoughts, to building a robotic pitching machine that allowed a child to throw out the first pitch at a baseball game from thousands of miles away, to a single button that dims the lights, orders food, silencers your phone and puts on your favorite show, our projects are wide-ranging and unique. Our work has been featured on Fast Company, Wired, NYTimes, USA Today, the Today Show, Good Morning America, Gizmodo, Engadget, Forbes, and many more.

Deeplocal’s studio is located in a renovated brewery loft space in Sharpsburg, PA—just outside of Pittsburgh and within a few minutes of Lawrenceville. All team members at Deeplocal contribute and participate in work for our amazing roster of clients.

Our Mission

Invent products and experiences for innovative brands.

Our Purpose

To be a place where amazing talent can invent, create and inspire.

Our Core Values

Deeplocal is committed to maintaining the company's core values and culture as the company grows. Employees should exhibit the following Deeplocal core values:

• Inventive
• Impactful
• Resourceful
• Humble
• Efficient

Deeplocal is part of WPP, the trusted growth partner for the world's leading brands. Powered by exceptional talent and our agentic marketing platform WPP Open, WPP unites cutting-edge media intelligence and data solutions, creativity, production, enterprise solutions and expert strategic counsel.