Manager, AI Strategy & Portfolio Management

Ford Motor Company; Dearborn (MI); Hybrid; USD 116,000 - 218,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical coverage

Dental coverage

Vision coverage

Paid time off

Family care benefits

Tuition assistance

Employee resource groups

Job summary

Ford Motor Company is seeking an AI Portfolio Manager for the Central AI Team in Dearborn, MI. This hybrid role requires four days on-site weekly to manage intake and inventory of AI opportunities through Sandbox, Functional Program, and Enterprise Bet stages.

You will turn messy ideas into clean business cases with sponsors, funding asks, and clear next decisions, partnering with cross-functional teams for readiness and value hypotheses.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 3+ years of program/portfolio management experience with intake and prioritization.
• Ability to extract a clear business case with sponsor, funding and readiness.
• Experience preparing tradeoff analysis for leadership decisions.
• Comfort working across a matrixed organization with cross-functional leadership.
• Attention to detail and ability to synthesize inputs into decisions.

Responsibilities

• Manage intake across Sandbox, Functional Program, and Enterprise Bet stages.
• Maintain the portfolio pipeline as the single source of truth.
• Prepare prioritization inputs and tradeoff views for leadership forums.
• Clarify business problem, sponsorship, funding needs, and readiness with stakeholders.
• Flag stalled or underfunded opportunities for timely decision.
• Support the Strategy & Comms Lead with accurate pipeline data and analysis.

Skills

Organizational skills

Business case extraction

Tradeoff analysis

Matrix organization

Detail-oriented

Excel

PowerPoint

Education

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree

Tools

Excel

PowerPoint

Job description

We are the movers of the world and makers of the future. We get up every day, roll up our sleeves, and build a better world - together. At Ford, we're all a part of something bigger than ourselves. Are you ready to change the way the world moves?

Ford’s Central AI Team is the enterprise hub responsible for scaling AI and agentic solutions across the company. Behind every AI Bet that reaches an Enterprise scale decision, there's a pipeline of opportunities that started as a rough idea, got scoped, got prioritized against everything else competing for time and funding, and either earned its way forward or didn't. This role owns that pipeline.

In this position

Ford is building a new capability at the center of our enterprise AI strategy. Reporting into the Central AI Team’s Senior Manager, AI Strategy & Communications, the AI Portfolio Manager is responsible for running the intake and inventory process for every AI opportunity moving through Sandbox, Functional Program, and Enterprise Bet stages. This role is the operational backbone behind early portfolio decisions - making sure leadership always has an accurate, current view of what's in the pipeline, what it will cost, and what the tradeoffs are between funding one bet over another.

The ideal candidate is organized, comfortable working with cross-functional teams to pull out details they haven't fully thought through yet, and able to turn a messy, half-formed idea into a clean business case with a sponsor, a funding ask, and a clear next decision point.

Based in Dearborn, MI, this is a hybrid position with a required four-day onsite presence each week

What You'll Do

• Manage intake of new opportunities across Sandbox, Functional Program, and Enterprise Bet stages, running a consistent process so every opportunity gets evaluated the same way
• Maintain the portfolio pipeline and opportunity inventory as the single source of truth for what's in flight, what stage it's at, and what's changed since the last review
• Prepare prioritization inputs, tradeoff views, and start/stop/scale/sunset recommendations for leadership decision forums, laying out the choice clearly enough that a decision can be made in the room
• Partner with business functions to clarify the business problem, sponsorship, value hypothesis, business case funding need, and readiness to progress for each opportunity before it goes in front of leadership
• Flag opportunities that are stalled, underfunded, or missing a clear sponsor, so they don't sit in the pipeline without a decision
• Support the Strategy & Comms Lead in building decision packages and progression materials by supplying accurate, up-to-date pipeline data and analysis

You'll have

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of relevant education and experience
• 3+ years of experience in program management, portfolio management, business operations, or strategy roles involving intake and prioritization of competing initiatives with skills that include:
  • Strong organizational skills and comfort owning a live inventory or pipeline that changes constantly and needs to stay accurate
  • Ability to extract a clear business case — problem, value, sponsor, funding, readiness — from a stakeholder who hasn't fully articulated it yet
  • Experience preparing tradeoff analysis or prioritization materials used in a leadership decision-making process
  • Comfort working across a matrixed organization, leveraging cross-functional leadership skills
  • Strong attention to detail combined with the ability to synthesize a messy set of inputs into something clean and decision-ready
• 3+ years of Excel/PowerPoint or related skills for building tradeoff views, pipeline trackers, and prioritization materials

Even better, you may have

• Master's degree
• Experience in automotive, technology, or another large-scale enterprise environment managing a multi-initiative portfolio
• Background in venture, corporate strategy, PMO, or business case development where you evaluated new ideas against a fixed pool of funding
• Familiarity with how AI or technology pilots typically progress from experiment to scaled program, and what readiness signals predict success
• Experience building or maintaining a portfolio tracking tool or system used by multiple stakeholders
• Direct experience partnering with technical or product teams to translate a capability into a funding-ready business case

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 childcare 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 leadership level 6 and ranges from $115,500- 218,100.

Final determination of salary grade will be based on candidate's skills and experience, and base salary will be set within the applicable range according to job scope, responsibility and competitive market value.

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.