Junior Designer

Ford Motor • Long Beach, CA

2d • Hybrid

About The Position

Our studio is a fast-paced, skunkworks-style design team responsible for the end-to-end experience, including digital and physical design of new businesses, new products, and new services. We move quickly, experiment often, and thrive on turning ambiguous problems into tangible solutions. We're looking for a curious, adaptable, and driven Junior Designer to join our team and grow alongside us as we envision and craft simple, thoughtful, enjoyable, and compelling products and services for customers. This is an incredible opportunity for an early-career designer to build a broad, multidisciplinary skill set across physical and digital design disciplines in a high-energy, small-team environment where every contributor wears multiple hats. You'll gain hands-on exposure to concepting and sketching, low- to high-fidelity prototyping, workshop facilitation, and asset production across the full lifecycle of projects, pilots, and research initiatives — all while being mentored by senior designers and cross-functional experts.

Requirements

• 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).

Nice To Haves

• 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.

Responsibilities

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Begin applying systems thinking to physical experience design, learning how touchpoints connect across a service journey for consumer and business applications.
• 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.
• Support the design and iteration of experience concepts, helping confirm feasibility within program constraints while learning how strategy translates into execution.

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.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level