Junior Designer

Ford Motor Company • Long Beach, CA

2d • $95,600 - $145,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

The Junior Designer will join Ford Motor Company's fast-paced, skunkworks-style design studio, which develops end-to-end experiences and creates new businesses, products, and services across digital and physical design. This early-career role offers opportunities to build multidisciplinary skills in a small, high-energy team, with senior designer and cross-functional expert mentorship. Work spans concepting and sketching, prototyping, workshop facilitation, and asset production throughout projects, pilots, and research initiatives.

The designer will support the development of novel experience solutions to customer problems, help translate research and user insights into product concepts, and iterate on design solutions in response to feedback. The role participates throughout the design process, from research and inspiration through prototyping and communicating a vision, and develops systems thinking across service touchpoints. The designer collaborates with engineering, planning, and research teammates, while learning how experience content strategy and program constraints inform execution.

This is a growth-focused position in a studio that values speed, experimentation, and versatility across physical, digital, and service design. The position is hybrid and requires onsite work four or more days per week. Salary grade 7, with a stated range of $95,600–$145,000. Visa sponsorship is not available. Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States; employment eligibility will be verified at hire.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in industrial design, transportation design, or a related field.
• Some experience—such as internship, co-op, academic, or entry-level experience—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, such as Alias AutoStudio, Rhino, or Blender.
• Familiarity with presentation applications such as PowerPoint, Keynote, or similar.

Nice To Haves

• 0–2 years of industrial design or transportation design studio experience; internships and academic project work are welcome.
• 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, such as Photoshop or Illustrator.
• Some 3D application skills, such as Alias AutoStudio, VRED, Rhino, Maya, or Blender.
• Enthusiasm for contributing to multidisciplinary team projects and willingness to stretch beyond a single design discipline.
• Hands-on experience or interest in building low-fidelity prototypes using materials and methods such as cardboard, foam core, wood, laser cutting, or 3D printing, and a desire to learn production and prototyping methods.
• Interest in translating 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 experience solutions to meaningful customer problems, identifying design opportunities and actionable concepts aligned with user needs, business goals, design principles, and technical capabilities.
• Develop prototyping and design visualization skills, including rough “build to learn” prototyping, with growing emphasis on physical enablers; iterate based on customer, user, and system feedback under senior team guidance.
• Assist in translating customer and user insights into desirable, feasible product concepts.
• Participate in all stages of the design process, from inspiration and research to prototyping and vision communication, across integrated digital-physical experiences involving brands, products, and services.
• Begin applying systems thinking to physical experience design and learn how touchpoints connect across consumer and business service journeys.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teammates, including engineering, planning, and research.
• Support the design and iteration of experience concepts, confirm feasibility within program constraints, and learn how strategy translates into execution.
• Contribute to concepting and sketching, prototyping, workshop facilitation, and asset production across projects, pilots, and research initiatives.

Benefits

• Immediate medical, dental, vision, and prescription drug coverage.
• Flexible family care days, paid parental leave, new parent ramp-up programs, and subsidized back-up child care.
• Family-building benefits, including adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement and fertility treatments.
• 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