Data Scientist

Ford Motor Company is seeking a Data Scientist with a strong background in natural language processing and a focus on Large Language Models (LLMs) and generative AI. In this role, you will collaborate with product, engineering, analytics, and business teams to translate complex business needs into intelligent, reliable, scalable, and production-ready AI solutions. The ideal candidate will combine strong applied data science and machine learning expertise with hands-on experience developing LLM-powered applications, model evaluation frameworks, responsible AI controls, and cloud-based AI solutions using Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Experience with agentic AI—including tool-enabled agents, workflow orchestration, and multi-agent systems—is a plus

Based in Dearborn, MI, this is a hybrid position with a requirement to be onsite four or more days per week.

Relocation assistance may be available for qualified candidates.

What you'll do...

• Design, prototype, evaluate, and productionize LLM-powered applications for enterprise and customer-facing use cases.
• Develop prompt strategies, structured-output workflows, model routing, context-management approaches, and fine-tuning or adaptation methods when appropriate.
• Create rigorous LLM evaluation frameworks covering task quality, factuality, relevance, robustness, latency, cost, safety, and user experience.
• Explore and implement agentic AI patterns such as planning, tool and function calling, memory, reflection, human-in-the-loop approvals, and multi-step workflow execution.
• Develop and deploy scalable AI and machine learning solutions on GCP using services such as Vertex AI, BigQuery, Cloud Storage, Cloud Run, Cloud Functions, Pub/Sub, and related data and AI services.
• Build reusable Python components, APIs, experimentation pipelines, and data products that integrate with enterprise platforms and applications.
• Create and maintain data pipelines that prepare structured and unstructured data for modeling, experimentation, evaluation, and production use.
• Perform exploratory analysis, feature engineering, statistical modeling, and machine learning to support broader data science needs.
• Implement observability, monitoring, guardrails, automated testing, and feedback loops to improve model and application performance after deployment.
• Communicate technical findings, tradeoffs, risks, and recommendations clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Stay current with emerging generative AI methods and translate promising research into practical business value.

You'll have...

• Bachelor’s degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering or similar field or equivalent combination of relevant education and experience.
• 2+ years of experience applying statistical analysis and traditional machine-learning methods to solve business problems.
• 2+ years of experience delivering end-to-end data science solutions, from data exploration and feature engineering through model validation, deployment, and monitoring.
• 2+ years professional experience in data science, machine learning, applied AI, natural language processing, or a related technical role.
• 2+ years of programming skills in Python and proficiency with SQL; experience writing maintainable, testable, production-quality code.
• 1+ years of experience developing applications with commercial or open-source LLMs.
• 1+ years of experience with prompt engineering, LLM evaluation, model integration, and core NLP concepts.
• 1+ years of experience working with GCP data and AI services, particularly Vertex AI and BigQuery, or comparable experience on another major cloud platform with the ability to transition to GCP.
• 1+ years of experience with modern software development and cloud deployment practices, including Git, APIs, containers, CI/CD, identity and access management, and production monitoring.

Even better, you may have...

• Master’s degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering or related field.
• 5+ years experience designing or deploying agentic AI systems, including tool-using agents, graph-based workflows, multi-agent collaboration, or human-in-the-loop controls.
• Ability to translate ambiguous business needs into measurable technical objectives and deliver iteratively in a cross-functional environment.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, documentation, and communication skills.
• Hands-on experience with Vertex AI capabilities, including Model Garden, Generative AI Studio, custom training, model endpoints, pipelines, evaluation, and model monitoring.
• Experience building analytics and machine learning workflows with BigQuery, BigQuery ML, Dataflow, or related GCP services.
• Experience with fine-tuning, parameter-efficient adaptation, synthetic-data generation, distillation, or model serving and optimization.
• Experience developing evaluation datasets, automated evaluators, adversarial tests, red-team scenarios, and regression test suites for generative AI.
• Knowledge of LLMOps and MLOps practices, model and prompt versioning, experiment tracking, monitoring, scalable inference, and cost optimization.
• Experience delivering AI solutions in a regulated, safety-conscious, or large-enterprise environment.

You may not check every box, or your experience may look a little different from what we've outlined, but if you think you can bring value to Ford Motor Company, we encourage you to apply!

As an established global company, we offer the benefit of choice. You can choose what your Ford future will look like: will your story span the globe, or keep you close to home? Will your career be a deep dive into what you love, or a series of new teams and new skills? Will you be a leader, a changemaker, a technical expert, a culture builder…or all of the above? No matter what you choose, we offer a work life that works for you, including:

• 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.

This position is a salary grade 7 or 8 and ranges from $99,600-$192,900.

Final determination of salary grade will be based on candidate's skills and experience, and base salary will be set within the applicable range according to job scope, responsibility and competitive market value.

Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.

Candidates for positions with Ford Motor Company must be legally authorized to work in the United States. Verification of employment eligibility will be required at the time of hire.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, age, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status or protected veteran status. This position is hybrid with a requirement to be onsite four or more days per week.

Change the world with your ideas.

Speak up. We’re listening. At Ford, we believe the right ideas, and the people behind them, can move an entire industry. Here, you'll work with teams who value your voice, push bold ideas forward, and leave a mark that