Staff Sensory Engineer

Ford Motor • Long Beach, CA

22h • Hybrid

About The Position

Ford’s Electric Vehicles, Digital and Design (EVDD) team is charged with delivering the company’s vision of a fully electric transportation future. EVDD is customer-obsessed, entrepreneurial, and data-driven and is dedicated to delivering industry-leading customer experience for electric vehicle buyers and owners. You’ll join an agile team of doers pioneering our EV future by working collaboratively, staying focused on only what matters, and delivering excellence day in and day out. Join us to make positive change by helping build a better world where every person is free to move and pursue their dreams. This position will use your expertise to expand the scope of Craftsmanship and Sensory Experience (CSx) into new disciplines and across the entire vehicle development timeline. You will act as the voice of the customer for Color and Materials and Illumination attributes from product concept to production. The role will fuse Consumer Science, Engineering, Marketing and Attributes with established design, prototyping and production quality techniques to deliver a world beating product – and you will be at the heart of it. The mission of our team is to overdeliver on every aspect of the customer experience. You will be instrumental in achieving this goal for CSx and will be fully empowered by the Ford Advanced EV organization to achieve the best possible results. This role will exposure to the highest levels of leadership within the organization and present many opportunities for development. Within CSx our objective is to curate the sensory ‘handshake’ which bonds customer to product via emotional connection. In achieving this goal you will get involved in all aspects of the color and materials and illumination development processes, from initial scoping - benchmarking / target setting and content alignment, leading documentation and change management deliverables, driving physical mockups and prototypes. Through to production – part and assembly quality maturation, acting as the voice of the customer for final product execution, identifying and resolving product / component disconnects related to materials and illumination.

Requirements

• Bachelor's in Engineering, Product / Industrial / CMF / Automotive Design or technical discipline or equivalent combination of relevant education and experience.
• 5+ years' experience with Automotive Lighting, Design Quality, Mastering, Craftsmanship or Perceived Quality Standards at a global Automotive company
• Strong understanding of material and illumination impact on overall craftsmanship and perceived quality
• Proven technical knowledge and ability to collaborate with engineering, design, manufacturing, and suppliers
• Knowledge of various materials and decoration techniques (plastic, paint, leather/vinyl/fabrics, etc.)
• Knowledge of various lighting technologies used in automotive applications.
• Knowledge of texturing processes and applications
• Knowledge of automotive components (interior/exterior) and relevant terminology
• Must be willing to travel 10-20%

Nice To Haves

• Experience with Automotive product Marketing or Consumer Research
• Experience working in a manufacturing/production environment

Responsibilities

• Lead Perceived Quality evaluations for Color and Materials plus vehicle Illumination, assessing customer insight data, trends analysis, completing benchmarking and market spec assessments and generating targets and requirements to support your attribute.
• Develop the process for alignment of the Color and Material / Illumination specification on vehicle projects, coordinating inputs from Color and Material Design, Studio Design, Marketing, Engineering and Programme, whilst also yourself acting as the voice of the customer for Perceived Quality.
• Own the formal specification documentation which the whole team will use to understand the project intent.
• Lead the virtual phase development team to ‘build in’ Sensory Quality, ensuring that design solutions deliver best in class execution capability for all components including injection moldings, cut and sew, paint and films.
• Responsible for setting the bar with respect to quality standards and requirements for Sensory Quality, ensuring that supplier sourced and internally produced components and assemblies meet the highest levels of competitiveness and meet world class standards.
• Engage closely with the color harmony process, defining and verifying requirements for products, and collaborating with the Core Development and Manufacturing teams to uphold exacting standards of execution throughout production.

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: Senior