Junior Designer

Ford; Long Beach, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 96,000 - 145,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision coverage

Family care days

Tuition assistance

Vehicle discount program

Paid holidays

Paid time off

Job summary

Ford is seeking a junior designer to join a skunkworks-style studio, focusing on physical, digital, and service design. You will contribute to innovative experiences, develop prototyping skills, and translate customer insights into usable product concepts while collaborating with engineering, planning, and research teams.

The role offers growth in a fast-paced environment with strong emphasis on learning and multidisciplinary versatility across projects.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in industrial design, transportation design, or related field.
• Experience in consumer product industry, transportation sector, supplier, design consultancy, or similar field.
• Knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite tools.
• Familiarity with 3D modeling software (Alias AutoStudio, Rhino, Blender).
• Familiarity with presentation apps (PowerPoint, Keynote).

Responsibilities

• Contributing to Design Innovation: support design of novel experience solutions aligning with user needs, goals, and capabilities.
• Building Prototyping & Visualization Skills: develop rough prototyping and visualization, iterating based on feedback.
• Supporting Insight-Driven Design: translate insights into feasible product concepts.
• Engaging Across the Full Design Process: participate through all design stages from research to vision communication.
• Developing Systems Thinking: apply systems thinking to connect touchpoints across a service journey.
• Practicing Multidisciplinary Collaboration: work with engineering, planning, and research teams in a small studio.
• Learning Experience Content Strategy: assist in design iteration within program constraints and translate strategy to execution.

Skills

Industrial design

3D modeling

Prototyping

Adobe Creative Suite

Presentation skills

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in industrial design or related field

Tools

Alias AutoStudio

Rhino

Blender

VRED

Job description

What you'll do...

• Contributing to Design Innovation: Support the design of novel and unique experience solutions to meaningful customer problems, helping identify design opportunities and actionable concepts that align with user needs, business goals, design principles, and technical capabilities.
• Building Prototyping & Visualization Skills: Develop your craft in rough prototyping ('build to learn') and design visualization, with growing emphasis on physical enablers. You'll iterate on design solutions based on customer, user, and system feedback under the guidance of senior team members.
• Supporting Insight-Driven Design: Assist in translating customer and user insights into desirable, feasible product concepts — a core skill you'll continue to sharpen as you grow in the role.
• Engaging Across the Full Design Process: Actively participate in every stage of the design process, from inspiration and research to prototyping and vision communication, gaining exposure to integrated digital-physical experience design across brand, products, and services.
• Developing Systems Thinking: Begin applying systems thinking to physical experience design, learning how touchpoints connect across a service journey for consumer and business applications.
• Practicing Multidisciplinary Collaboration: Work closely with cross-functional teammates — including engineering, planning, and research — to build strong working relationships and develop the versatility needed to move fluidly between disciplines in a small, agile studio.

• Learning Experience Content Strategy: Support the design and iteration of experience concepts, helping confirm feasibility within program constraints while learning how strategy translates into execution.

Why This Role:

This position is designed for growth. You'll be embedded in a skunkworks-style studio that values speed, experimentation, and versatility over rigid specialization — an ideal environment for a junior designer looking to rapidly expand their multidisciplinary capabilities across physical, digital, and service design.

You'll have...

• Bachelor's degree in industrial design, transportation design, or a related field.
• Some experience (internship, co-op, academic, or entry-level) in a consumer product industry, transportation sector or supplier, design consultancy, or similar field.
• Working knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite design tools.
• Familiarity with at least one 3D modeling software application (e.g., Alias AutoStudio, Rhino, or Blender).
• Familiarity with relevant presentation applications (e.g., PowerPoint, Keynote, or similar).

Even better, you may have...

• 0–2 years of industrial design or transportation design studio experience (internships and academic project work welcomed).
• Strong curiosity, creativity, and eagerness to experiment with features and functional solutions.
• Emerging ability to translate customer and research inputs into relevant, desirable product concepts.
• Developing communication skills through presentation and storytelling.
• Growing product design aesthetic sensibility.
• Foundational sketching, visualization, modeling, and presentation skills.
• Some 2D application skills (e.g., Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.).
• Some 3D application skills (e.g., Alias AutoStudio, VRED, Rhino, Maya, or Blender).
• Genuine enthusiasm for contributing to projects in a multidisciplinary team environment, with a willingness to stretch beyond a single design discipline.
• Hands-on experience or interest in building low-fidelity prototypes (e.g., cardboard, foam core, wood, laser cutting, 3D printing) and a desire to learn production and prototyping methods.
• Interest in learning to translate design vision into animated story-form using digital presentation tools (including AI visualization tools).
• A growth mindset and willingness to take on new challenges as design proposals move from concept toward production.

As an established global company, we offer the benefit of choice. You can choose what your Ford future will look like: will your story span the globe, or keep you close to home? Will your career be a deep dive into what you love, or a series of new teams and new skills? Will you be a leader, a changemaker, a technical expert, a culture builder…or all of the above? No matter what you choose, we offer a work life that works for you, including:

• 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.

This position is a salary grade 7 and ranges from $95,600-$145,000.

Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.

Candidates for positions with Ford Motor Company must be legally authorized to work in the United States. Verification of employment eligibility will be required at the time of hire.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, age, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status or protected veteran status.

In the United States, if you need a reasonable accommodation for the online application process due to a disability, please call 1-888-336-0660.

This position is hybrid with a requirement to be onsite four or more days per week.