Senior Data Scientist

Ford

22h • $85,400 - $192,900 • Hybrid

About The Position

We are the movers of the world and the 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?
As the Senior Data Scientist for Manufacturing AI & OT Data Strategy, you will play a multifaceted role combining strategic leadership and hands-on technical expertise. You will be responsible for overseeing the end-to-end lifecycle of data science projects, from initial problem definition and data acquisition to the deployment and continuous monitoring of models. You will serve as a key liaison between Manufacturing Operations, Engineering, and IT teams to translate complex industrial challenges—such as predictive maintenance, quality defect prediction, and process optimization—into scalable AI solutions.
AI Stack Development: Build features and services across the full AI stack: orchestration, retrieval/grounding, prompt/agent logic, evaluation/guardrails, serving, and observability.
End-to-End ML Pipelines: Build end-to-end ML pipelines from data collection and labeling through training, evaluation, and deployment across diverse factory environments.
Multi-modal Data Science: Work with diverse, heterogeneous datasets combining multiple modalities including images, multi-spectral sensor outputs, video, text, and tabular data to build scalable solutions.
Production Ownership: Take ownership of production models, ensuring robust monitoring, drift detection, and alerting systems for rapid issue resolution.
Cross-functional Collaboration: Collaborate with teams in production, process engineering, controls, and quality to translate ambiguous problem statements into actionable, end-to-end machine learning solutions.
Manufacturing Problem Solving: Partner with factory, quality and engineering teams to identify high-impact problems solvable through AI.

Requirements

• BS/MS or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Statistics, or a related quantitative field.
• 5+ years of progressive experience in Data Science, utilizing Machine Learning in production to solve complex business problems in a leading role.
• 3+ years of direct experience applying data science within a manufacturing or industrial environment (ideally automotive).
• For Senior Level: Demonstrated ownership of services or platform components, end-to-end delivery of machine learning applications.
• Expert proficiency in Python (Numpy, Pandas, Scikit-learn, TensorFlow/PyTorch).
• Strong SQL skills for complex data extraction, modeling and manipulation.
• Proven ability to rapidly learn new concepts and apply machine learning methodologies to new and diverse domains.
• Proficiency with modern software delivery practices (version control, CI/CD, Terraform).
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (GCP Preferred), cloud-native services, and containerization (Docker/Kubernetes).

Nice To Haves

• Hands-on experience with LLM application concepts (retrieval, grounding, agent design, function/tool use, evaluation, and MCP server).
• Real-world experience deploying and maintaining production machine learning systems within an industrial or manufacturing set-up.
• Deep experience with Operational Technology (OT) data infrastructure and industrial protocols (e.g., OPC UA, MQTT).

Responsibilities

• Overseeing the end-to-end lifecycle of data science projects, from initial problem definition and data acquisition to the deployment and continuous monitoring of models.
• Serving as a key liaison between Manufacturing Operations, Engineering, and IT teams to translate complex industrial challenges—such as predictive maintenance, quality defect prediction, and process optimization—into scalable AI solutions.
• Build features and services across the full AI stack: orchestration, retrieval/grounding, prompt/agent logic, evaluation/guardrails, serving, and observability.
• Build end-to-end ML pipelines from data collection and labeling through training, evaluation, and deployment across diverse factory environments.
• Work with diverse, heterogeneous datasets combining multiple modalities including images, multi-spectral sensor outputs, video, text, and tabular data to build scalable solutions.
• Take ownership of production models, ensuring robust monitoring, drift detection, and alerting systems for rapid issue resolution.
• Collaborate with teams in production, process engineering, controls, and quality to translate ambiguous problem statements into actionable, end-to-end machine learning solutions.
• Partner with factory, quality and engineering teams to identify high-impact problems solvable through AI.

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: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees