Sr. Design Technologist & Prototyper

Ford • Palo Alto, CA

10h • Hybrid

About The Position

We made history and now we work to transform the future – for our customers, our communities and our families. You'll see your work on the road every day, helping people move freely and pursue their dreams. At Ford, you can build more than vehicles. Come build what matters.

Digital Product Design (DPD) at Ford is committed to envisioning and creating simple, thoughtful, enjoyable, and compelling product experiences that our customers need and love. We work in close partnership with product and engineering to deliver best-in-class interactions experiences that meet the needs of people today, and in the future. Our team is comprised of a dynamic group of product designers, researchers, visual designers, industrial designers, modelers, and project managers.
In this position...

We’re looking for a Sr. Design Technologist & Prototyper to help bring the next generation of digital and physical experiences to life on our Universal Electric Vehicle (UEV) platform. This role sits at the intersection of design, engineering, and research, turning early concepts into high-fidelity, testable prototypes that accelerate decision-making, validate feasibility, and raise the craft of experience execution.

You’ll partner closely with the team of product designers to transform concepts into compelling, usable experiences—supporting fast iteration cycles, design reviews, and real-world customer evaluation. This team culture emphasizes cohesive, platform-minded thinking over one-off feature solutions, and relies on prototyping as a core mechanism for learning and alignment.
Why This Role Matters...
The Universal Electric Vehicle platform is foundational to the future of vehicle experiences. Prototyping is critical to ensuring ideas scale, feel intuitive, and are feasible to build. In this role, you’ll help shape experiences that move beyond concepts into reality—impacting customers across vehicles, use cases, and generations.

Requirements

• Bachelors or equivalent combination of relevant education and experience.
• Strong experience creating prototypes across multiple levels of fidelity.
• 5+ years of experience in Prototyping
• Comfort working across design and engineering disciplines.
• Solid understanding of interaction design, UI architecture, and systems thinking.
• Ability to communicate ideas clearly through prototypes and storytelling.
• Experience working in fast-paced, iterative, cross-functional environments.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with automotive HMI, IVI, or embedded systems.
• Familiarity with electrification, energy, charging, or power-management experiences.
• Experience supporting research studies or customer clinics.
• Ability to prototype both digital and physical interactions.

Responsibilities

• Rapidly prototype next-generation UEV experiences across digital and physical touchpoints.
• Translate early concepts into interactive and functional prototypes that clarify journeys, flows, and interaction models.
• Support design reviews, leadership demos, and milestone presentations with compelling prototypes.
• Build prototypes to enable usability testing, customer clinics, and real-world validation.
• Iterate quickly based on feedback from research, engineering, and product partners.
• Develop reusable prototyping patterns and workflows that scale across the UEV platform.

Benefits

• 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.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees