Hybrid Industrial Designer

at Ford Motor Company

• Job title: Industrial Designer
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Mid level, Senior
• Salary: $74,300 - $166,200 per year
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Dearborn, United States

About the role

• Industrial Designer developing unique experience design solutions at Ford. Collaborating on integrated digital-physical experiences and managing prototyping throughout the design process.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to Design Innovation: Design novel and unique experience design solutions to meaningful problems for customers, identifying design opportunities and actionable concepts that align with user and business needs, design principles, and technical capabilities.
• Develop Prototyping & Design Visualization Skills: Assist in initial rough prototyping and design visualization methods. You will be skilled in initial rough prototyping ("build to learn") with a primary emphasis on physical enablers, and in iterating design solutions based upon customer, user, and system feedback to meet user expectations and deliver successful outcomes.
• Support Insight-Driven Design Solutions: Assist in creating design solutions that are deeply rooted in customer and user insights, expertly translating these insights into highly desirable and feasible physical product solutions.
• Design Leadership & Vision: Actively contribute throughout the entire design process from inspiration and research to building prototypes and communicating a clear vision. You will help bring to life integrated digital-physical experiences through brand, products, and services, and collaborate with project teams to conceive, design, develop, test, and launch impactful new products and services.
• Systems Thinking: Apply systems thinking to physical experience design that seamlessly engages people through touchpoints along a service journey for consumer and business applications.
• Stakeholder Collaboration & Communication: Bring clarity and focus through effective communication of functional needs and aesthetic sensibilities. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams in an advanced product development environment, building strong relationships with engineering, planning, and research stakeholders.
• Experience Content Strategy & Feasibility: Partner to support the initial design and development of experience concepts. You will design and iterate key program applications of the domain-based Experience Content Strategies, confirming key experiences are feasible within program constraints.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design, Transportation Design or a related field
• A portfolio or work examples showcasing industrial design projects
• Designer level experience in a consumer product industry, transportation sector or supplier, design consultancy, or similar field.
• Proficiency with Adobe Creative Suite design tools.
• Proficiency with at least one 3D modeling software application (e.g., Alias AutoStudio, Rhino, or Blender).
• Proficiency in relevant presentation applications (e.g., PowerPoint, Keynote, or similar).
• Master's degree in industrial design, Transportation Design or a related field (even better)
• 5+ years of Industrial Design or Transportation Design studio work experience (even better)
• Strong creativity and demonstrated inventiveness towards features and functional solutions (even better)
• Strong ability to translate customer and research inputs into relevant, highly desirable, and feasible product solutions (even better)
• Strong communication skills through presentation and storytelling (even better)
• Strong product design aesthetic sensibilities (even better)
• Strong sketching, visualization, modelling, and presentation skills (even better)
• Strong 2D application skills (e.g., Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) (even better)
• Strong 3D application skills (e.g., Alias AutoStudio, VRED, Rhino, Maya or Blender) (even better)
• Demonstrated ability to actively contribute to projects in a multidisciplinary team environment (even better)
• Demonstrated ability to build low fidelity prototypes (e.g., hands-on with cardboard, foam core, wood, laser cutting, 3D printing) and understanding of production methods and prototyping processes (even better)
• Demonstrated ability to translate design vision in animated story-form through creative use of digital presentation applications (including AI visualization tools) (even better)
• Ability to support the development of design proposals from concept to production (even better).

Benefits

• Immediate medical, dental, vision and prescription drug coverage
• Flexible family care days, paid parental leave, new parent ramp-up programs, subsidized back-up child care and more
• Family building benefits including adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, fertility treatments, and more
• Vehicle discount program for employees and family members and management leases
• Tuition assistance
• Established and active employee resource groups
• Paid time off for individual and team community service
• A generous schedule of paid holidays, including the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day
• Paid time off and the option to purchase additional vacation time.