--- title: 'Creative Lead, Japan at OpenAI' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/creative-lead-japan-openai-tokyo-rwjnr1e5es9v' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-11-05' --- # Creative Lead, Japan at OpenAI - **Company:** [OpenAI](https://feeny.ai/companies/openai) - **Location:** Tokyo, Japan - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** hybrid - **Posted:** 2026-10-16 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-05 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/171868ac-1070-4357-b990-acc918f68dc2 ## Job description ## About the Team We bring OpenAI’s brand to life around the world. As a multidisciplinary creative team, we design work that connects meaningfully with local cultures, from flagship global campaigns and international events to deeply localized moments. In close collaboration with the U.S. Creative Studio, as well as global and regional marketing teams, agencies, and creators, we ensure OpenAI’s brand principles are honored, protected, and expressed responsibly everywhere people meet our products. ## About the Role As the Japan Creative Lead, you will lead the creative vision and execution of OpenAI’s brand in Japan. You will define how global ideas are translated, adapted, and evolved for Japan, while developing original ideas rooted in Japanese culture. You will shape creative direction, elevate craft, and ensure local relevance while protecting global brand integrity. As part of the International Creative Studio, you’ll collaborate closely with creative colleagues across OpenAI and cross-functional partners in Japan. Together with the Japan Marketing Lead, you will select and co-lead agencies in Japan, while guiding creators and production partners to deliver bold, distinctive, and world-class work that connects with local audiences. You will play a key role in shaping and evolving OpenAI’s visual identity and creative frameworks for Japan, ensuring they resonate with local audiences while remaining true to our global brand vision and principles. We’re looking for a creative leader who is conceptually strong, visually sophisticated, culturally fluent in Japan, and deeply collaborative. You can set a high bar, bring others along with clarity and inspiration, and move confidently between creative direction and hands-on work. This role is based in Tokyo, Japan. In this role, you will: - Lead creative direction for brand campaigns, marketing, digital, content, experiential, events, and partnerships in Japan, across consumer and B2B audiences - Translate global brand strategy and creative vision into culturally resonant work for Japanese audiences, developing locally originated ideas alongside global campaign adaptations - Set and maintain a high bar for concept, craft, and storytelling across all creative outputs, with close attention to Japanese language, typography, and visual expression - Partner closely with the International and U.S. Creative Studio, Japan Marketing, and cross-functional partners to align on creative direction, systems, and brand standards - Guide and mentor designers, art directors, and creative partners working on Japan, providing clear direction, feedback, and inspiration - Collaborate with Japan Marketing to turn audience insights and product capabilities into clear, locally relevant ideas and stories - Shape and evolve OpenAI’s visual systems and creative frameworks for Japan while maintaining a consistent global brand - Select and co-lead agencies in Japan together with the Japan Marketing Lead, aligning on agency partners, briefs and creative direction - Interpret strategy and briefs, identifying the core creative tension and turning it into distinctive ideas that resonate in Japan - Act as a trusted creative partner to cross-functional stakeholders in Japan, balancing ambition, cultural nuance, and brand responsibility You might thrive in this role if you: - Have a strong, distinctive portfolio demonstrating creative leadership, conceptual clarity, and exceptional craft across multiple mediums - Bring experience leading brand work in Japan, with a portfolio that demonstrates local cultural relevance and strong global brand stewardship - Have experience working within a global brand organization, bridging global creative leadership and local marketing teams. - Can interpret global creative direction through a local cultural lens, articulate nuanced consumer insights and creative preferences that may be lost in translation, and constructively navigate differing perspectives to deliver work that resonates locally while maintaining global brand consistency. - Have deep cultural fluency in Japan and a strong understanding of local audiences, language, visual culture, storytelling, and creative communities - Are equally comfortable setting creative vision and getting hands-on when needed - Have a refined design eye and a strong, well-articulated point of view - Enjoy collaborating across languages, cultures, and time zones in complex, fast-moving environments - Are an empathetic leader who elevates teams through clarity, trust, and constructive feedback - Balance creativity with strategic rigor and strong brand stewardship - Are excited by the role of creativity in shaping how transformative technology shows up in people’s lives in Japan - Have strong cross-functional collaboration skills ## 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 that form the full spectrum of humanity. We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. For additional information, please see [OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement](https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf). Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations. To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through [this form](https://form.asana.com/?d=57018692298241&k=5MqR40fZd7jlxVUh5J-UeA). No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this [link](https://form.asana.com/?k=bQ7w9h3iexRlicUdWRiwvg&d=57018692298241). [OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy](https://cdn.openai.com/policies/global-employee-and-contractor-privacy-policy.pdf) At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology. ## About OpenAI ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company with a mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity. - **Entity Type**: Private – structured as a nonprofit parent (OpenAI Foundation) governing a for-profit public benefit corporation (OpenAI Group). The company has confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the SEC, signaling a potential future IPO. - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA - **Founded**: 2015 - **Founders**: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Wojciech Zaremba, and others ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Artificial intelligence research and deployment - **Target customers**: B2B (enterprises via API and platform), B2C (ChatGPT users), and developers (API, open-source models) - **Mission**: To ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) – AI systems that are generally smarter than humans – benefits all of humanity. ## Products & Services - **[ChatGPT](https://openai.com/chatgpt)**: Conversational AI assistant available via web and mobile, used by consumers and integrated into enterprise workflows. - **[GPT-4 API](https://openai.com/product)**: Large language model accessed via API for developers to build AI-powered applications (text generation, summarization, code assistance, etc.). - **[DALL-E](https://openai.com/dall-e-3)**: Image generation model that creates images from natural language descriptions. - **[Whisper](https://openai.com/research/whisper)**: Open-source speech recognition system. - **[OpenAI Agents](https://openai.com/)**: Emerging product category focused on autonomous AI agents that can perform tasks on behalf of users (announced June 2026). ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed in the provided sources. Widely reported in the press at ~$300 billion as of early 2026 (post-funding round), but this figure is not confirmed by OpenAI’s official materials. - **Key Metric**: Total funding exceeds $13 billion from Microsoft and other investors. The company has also confidentially filed a draft S-1 with the SEC (see [openai.com](https://openai.com/) – “Confidential submission of draft S-1”). - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Microsoft (strategic partner and largest investor), with additional participation from Thrive Capital, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and others. - **Growth Signals**: Active hiring with 721 open roles posted; expansion into agent-based products; confidential IPO filing; continued deployment of frontier models. ## Competitive Advantages - **First-mover & brand recognition**: ChatGPT became the fastest-growing consumer app in history, establishing OpenAI as the household name in generative AI. - **Research leadership**: Consistently publishes cutting-edge research (GPT-4, DALL-E 3, Whisper, etc.) and attracts top AI talent. - **Compute & infrastructure**: Exclusive partnership with Microsoft provides massive cloud computing resources (Azure) for training and inference. - **Unique governance structure**: The nonprofit parent ensures mission alignment (AGI benefiting humanity) while the for-profit arm can raise capital and scale products. ## Strategic Focus - **Safe AGI development**: Continued emphasis on safety research, alignment, and responsible deployment (e.g., safety systems, model provenance). - **Enterprise expansion**: Growing ChatGPT Enterprise and API offerings for businesses. - **Agentic AI**: Building autonomous agents that can “transform work” (announced June 2026). - **IPO preparation**: Confidential S-1 filing indicates intent to go public, which will require increased financial transparency and governance maturity. ## Why Work Here - **Culture & values**: OpenAI’s stated values include “Humanity first,” “Act with humility,” “Feel the AGI,” and “Ship joy.” Operating principles emphasize agency, creativity, rapid iteration, and intense focus. - **Benefits**: Competitive health insurance, mental healthcare support, 24-week paid birth-parent leave (plus 20 weeks for other parents), generous PTO, annual learning & development stipend, daily meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner), and a domestic conference budget. - **Work environment**: Hybrid/office-based (San Francisco headquarters). The company offers a residency program for researchers and engineers transitioning into AI. - **Impact**: Employees work directly on frontier AI models that shape the industry and society. The mission-driven nature attracts talent passionate about AGI’s societal implications. ## Sources 1. [OpenAI About Page](https://openai.com/about/) 2. [OpenAI Careers Page](https://openai.com/careers/) 3. [OpenAI Job Search](https://openai.com/careers/search) 4. 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