Studio Liaison Engineer - Seats

Ford Motor • Dearborn, MI

6d • Hybrid

About The Position

Ford Motor Company is seeking a dynamic Studio Liaison for Seat Subsystems to join their product development team. This role serves as the link between the creative Design Studio and engineering teams, focusing on seat subsystems. The primary mission is to translate artistic vision into feasible engineering solutions, ensuring CAD concepts meet aesthetic, user experience, engineering, functional, regulatory, cost, modular design, and part reuse requirements. The role also involves analyzing competitive benchmarks to inform design and engineering strategies, championing engineering, cost-effectiveness, and product lifecycle perspectives within the design process, and resolving conflicts between design intent, technical feasibility, budget, and strategic goals early in development. This position influences vehicle interior design and works cross-functionally to deliver world-class seat subsystems.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering
• 3+ years of overall experience
• Excellent communication skills
• Exceptional graphical communication skills (sketching, rendering, digital modeling) to convey technical and design concepts effectively
• Proven ability to explain complex engineering concepts, cost implications, and strategic benefits of modularity/reuse clearly and concisely to non-technical audiences, particularly within a creative design environment

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity with principles of design for modularity, commonality, and part reuse.
• Ability to conduct competitive benchmarking and derive actionable insights.
• Proactive, disciplined, and highly collaborative approach to work
• Strong networking and relationship-building skills across diverse functional teams
• Self-accountable for delivering high-quality outcomes and ensuring design compliance, cost adherence, and alignment with modularity/reuse strategies
• Adept at negotiating and influencing stakeholders to achieve optimal design and engineering solutions that meet financial objectives and enhance product commonality
• Methodical in approach, yet capable of rapid analysis and decision-making in a fast-paced environment
• Ability to think "out of the box," be innovative, and resilient in navigating challenges between design, engineering, cost constraints, and strategic architectural goals

Responsibilities

• Act as the primary technical liaison between the Design Studio and the Seat Subsystems engineering teams, ensuring seamless communication and understanding of design intent and engineering requirements.
• Review and analyze CAD concepts developed by the creative team for seat subsystems, ensuring full compliance with engineering specifications, packaging constraints, manufacturing feasibility, regulatory standards, established program cost targets, and the principles of modularity and part reuse.
• Proactively identify potential engineering challenges, risks, non-compliance issues, or cost target deviations within design concepts and collaborate with both design and engineering teams to develop innovative, viable, cost-effective, and modular solutions that leverage existing part commonality where appropriate.
• Translate complex engineering requirements, cost implications, and strategic objectives for modularity and reuse into clear, actionable feedback for the Design Studio, guiding the refinement of CAD models to meet technical and financial criteria without compromising design vision.
• Facilitate regular design reviews, technical discussions, and problem-solving sessions between design and engineering stakeholders for seat subsystems.
• Contribute to the documentation of lessons learned and best practices related to design integration, cost management, modularity, part reuse, and competitive analysis, cascading knowledge to both design and engineering core teams.
• Coordinate extensively with various cross-functional teams, including Studio, Seat Complete, Seat Structure, Seat Features, Craftsmanship, Suppliers, Purchasing, Finance, and Program teams, to ensure holistic integration of seat subsystem designs that meet all requirements, including cost, and align with our modularity and reuse strategies.
• Champion the balance between aesthetic appeal, ergonomic excellence, engineering integrity, cost-effectiveness, and strategic product architecture (modularity, part reuse) throughout the product development lifecycle for seat subsystems.
• Analyze competitive seat subsystem designs and technologies to identify best practices, emerging trends, and opportunities for differentiation and improvement.

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