---
title: 'Computational Designer — Hybrid Living Textiles at OXMAN'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/computational-designer-hybrid-living-textiles-oxman-new-york-3cde0rn1fksg'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Computational Designer — Hybrid Living Textiles at OXMAN

- **Company:** OXMAN
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-07-14
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/oxman/c6cef5d0-0414-43df-a82c-50dd2b90be4d

## Job description

## OXMAN

OXMAN is a hybrid Design and R&D company that fuses design, technology, and biology to invent multi-scale products and environments. We reject the human-centric design paradigms that have divorced us from Nature, and instead pursue a Nature-centric approach—delivering solutions by, for, and with the natural world. We design across scales for systems-level impact, treating every construct as a whole system of complex interrelations rather than an isolated object.

## Role Overview

OXMAN seeks a Computational Designer to advance our work around Textile Design and Hybrid Living Materials. This person sits at the intersection of computational design, textile engineering, and synthetic biology, developing the algorithmic processes, predictive models, and automated fabrication systems through which living and engineered matter are woven together. They are fluent in code and at home in at least one of textile craft or biological reasoning—and curious enough to work across all both, treating computation as a language for mediating between digital design intent, material behavior, and biological agency. The role spans three integrated levels: the computational design of textiles themselves; the modeling of biological behavior that plays on across those textiles; and the engineering and automation of the fabrication processes that produce them. We're looking for genuine depth in one or two, an appetite for the rest, and the instinct to translate between them.

## Key Responsibilities

- Build pipelines that translate computational designs into machine instructions.
- Model and predict complex behavior—deformation, drape, stability, and structural response—for simulation and design optimization.
- Develop mechanistic, dynamical, or data-driven models of biological processes (pattern formation, growth, multicellular signaling, genetic circuits).
- Use computation to narrow large combinatorial possibility spaces.
- Collaborate with a multidisciplinary team of engineers, biologists, and designers, translating ideas and methods across domains.
- Communicate work clearly through meetings, presentations, and creative outlets, and maintain a shared library of processes, models, and tools.

## Preferred Experience

These are the three areas the role works across. Strong candidates will bring depth in one or more and the curiosity to engage with the others. Computational textile design

- Develop computational processes for knit and weave design, including parametric and generative methods for structure, pattern, and form.
- Build pipelines for the translation of computational designs into machine instructions (knit programming, jacquard instruction sets), closing the gap between geometry and fabrication.
- Develop inverse-design methods that derive machine instructions from target geometries or performance specifications
- Model and predict textile behavior—deformation, drape, stability, and structural response—to enable forward simulation and design optimization.

Modeling biological behavior

- Build mechanistic and data-driven models of the biological processes that play out on and through textile substrates—genetic-circuit and gene-regulatory dynamics, and spatial pattern formation, growth, and multicellular signaling—moving fluently between deterministic (ODE) and stochastic formulations, and between first-principles models and ML as each problem warrants.
- Calibrate and constrain these models against experimental data: parameter inference, sensitivity and identifiability analysis, and model-guided design of experiments.
- Use computation to narrow large combinatorial possibility spaces—screening which biological and material configurations are worth realizing in vivo rather than over-specifying systems in silico.
- Characterize and improve the stability and repeatability of living-material outcomes, building predictive models robust to biological and process variation
- Maintain a critical, empirically grounded stance on where modeling adds value and where physical experimentation leads.

Process engineering & automation

- Augment living-textile fabrication through design engineering and automation—programming robots, and knitting/weaving platforms
- Design and integrate sensor systems and controllers for closed-loop monitoring and control of hybrid living-material processes.
- Build tooling and infrastructure that make experimental processes reproducible, instrumented, and scalable across the digital–physical–biological domains.

Technical Skills Depth in one or more of the following areas Computational textile design:

- Computational design tools (for example:Rhino, Grasshopper)
- Knit/textile programming environments (KnitPaint, Stoll M1 Plus, Shima Seiki APEX); hands-on experience with CNC knitting machines (STOLL and/or Shima Seiki) and/or industrial jacquard looms
- A strong grasp of the physics and mechanics of knitted and woven textiles, fibers, and deformation.

Biological modeling:

- Mechanistic and/or data-driven modeling of biological or physical systems—ODE/stochastic models of genetic circuits and gene-regulatory networks, kinetic modeling, or machine learning for prediction and generative/inverse design
- Working fluency in biological reasoning sufficient to collaborate substantively with synthetic biologists (familiarity with combinatorial assembly, multicellular behavior, or microbial systems a plus).

Process engineering & automation:

- Robotics, CNC, sensing, and control systems—programming, integration, and closed-loop automation of fabrication processes.

Essential Qualities

- Strong programming ability.
- A genuinely cross-disciplinary instinct: able to translate ideas, methods, and constraints between design, engineering, and biology, and to collaborate substantively with specialists outside your own area
- A strong "maker" mindset—rigorous, empirical, and self-critical about where modeling adds value versus where you should simply build and test
- Portfolio demonstrating original computational work and out-of-the-box thinking
- Excellent written and verbal communication; commitment to the team and to ethics and integrity in all work

## About OXMAN

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: OXMAN is a design company fusing design, technology, and biology to invent multi-scale products and environments that empower synergy between Nature and humanity.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Startup/Early Stage)
- **Headquarters**: New York, New York, United States (787 Eleventh Ave)
- **Founded**: 2024 (public launch)
- **Founders**: Neri Oxman

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: Design Services, Biotechnology, Materials Science, Architecture
- Target customers: B2B (corporate partners, industry clients), Academia, and Nature as a "co-client"
- Mission or purpose statement: To shift from human-centric design to Nature-centric design, creating design solutions by, for, and with Nature while advancing humanity. The company aims to heal the rift between Nature and humanity.

## Products & Services
- **O° Shoe (The O Shoe)**: A 100% biodegradable shoe made without petrochemicals, producing zero microplastics. Unveiled in October 2024. Represents the company's platform technology applied to consumer goods.
- **Platform Technologies**: R&D arm that invents platform technologies enabling design and production "by, for, and with Nature." These platforms can be applied across industries and scales—from consumer goods to urban plans, pharmaceuticals to apparel, organisms to rockets.
- **Design & Consulting Services**: Activist design practice that partners with industry and academia to implement Nature-centric values across design, manufacturing, construction, and operational practices.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding — Not publicly disclosed
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Goodman Group (partnership to explore design for ecosystem biodiversity and resilience), Foster + Partners (designed the OXMAN lab in NYC)
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount of ~24 employees (+4.5% YoY growth); active job postings; public launch in October 2024 with significant press coverage; first product (O° Shoe) unveiled; partnership with major real estate group Goodman Group

## Competitive Advantages
- **Founder & Brand**: Founded by Neri Oxman, a world-renowned designer, architect, and former MIT Media Lab professor, giving the company immense credibility and a powerful network.
- **Interdisciplinary Approach**: Uniquely combines hardware, software, and "wetware" (biology) in a single practice, integrating an atelier, workshop, and lab.
- **Nature-Centric Design Philosophy**: A radical differentiator positioning Nature as a "co-client," moving beyond sustainability toward regeneration and synergy.
- **Platform Technologies**: Cross-scale, hierarchical design tools that can be applied across multiple industries, creating a defensible IP moat.
- **First Mover in Biodegradable Materials**: The O° Shoe is a tangible proof point of their platform's capability, addressing the massive microplastics problem.

## Strategic Focus
- **Platform Development**: Scaling their platform technologies for broader industry application across multiple sectors.
- **Partnerships**: Leading corporate partners in implementing Nature-centric values across their operations (e.g., Goodman Group).
- **Product Commercialization**: Bringing the O° Shoe and other bio-integrated products to market.
- **Talent Acquisition**: Building a world-class interdisciplinary team of designers, engineers, scientists, and makers.
- **Thought Leadership**: Advancing the "Nature-centric design" philosophy as a new paradigm for the design and construction industries.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-Driven Culture**: A clear, bold vision to heal the rift between Nature and humanity. Work is framed as a "calling" with profound impact.
- **Interdisciplinary Excellence**: Opportunity to work at the intersection of design, engineering, biology, and computation with a world-class team.
- **Creative & Intellectual Freedom**: Emphasis on taking risks, exploring "impossible" challenges, and pursuing profound questions.
- **Values**: The company culture emphasizes integrity, empathy, mediation of dichotomies (design/R&D, made/grown), balancing the timely and timeless, and pursuing the profound.
- **Work Environment**: Based in a first-of-its-kind atelier, workshop, and lab in New York City, designed by Foster + Partners.
- **Team Composition**: Small (~24 people), highly specialized team with backgrounds from MIT Media Lab, top universities, and leading design/tech firms. Emphasis on self-direction and collaboration across disciplines.
- **Location**: New York City (HQ) with presence in France. Hybrid/office policy not explicitly stated but likely in-person given the lab/workshop nature.

## Sources
1. [oxman.com](https://oxman.com/company)
2. [oxman.com](https://oxman.com/mission)
3. [oxman.com](https://oxman.com/careers)
4. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/oxman)
5. [prnewswire.com](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/oxman-unveils-the-o-shoe---a-100-biodegradable-shoe-made-without-petrochemicals-producing-zero-microplastics-302290648.html)
6. [prnewswire.com](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/neri-oxman-launches-oxman-a-revolutionary-practice-transforming-design-generation-manufacturing-and-construction-for-the-simultaneous-benefit-of-humans-and-the-natural-environment-302264818.html)
7. [fosterandpartners.com](https://www.fosterandpartners.com/news/foster-partners-and-neri-oxman-complete-the-groundbreaking-design-and-innovation-lab-for-oxman)
8. [goodman.com](https://www.goodman.com/news/2024/oxman-partnership)

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