Research Scientist – Advanced ML – DL Methods and Learning Frameworks 40545BR
At Ford Motor Company, we believe freedom of movement drives human progress. We also believe in providing you with the freedom to define and realize your dreams. With our incredible plans for the future of mobility, we have a wide variety of opportunities for you to accelerate your career potential as you help us define tomorrow's transportation.
Ford's Research and Advanced Engineering team explores new vehicle and societal innovations that require some level of invention before they can be applied to our products and services. The team is building on a history of Ford innovation, including our invention of the three-way catalytic converter to modernize vehicle emissions controls in the 1970s and the world's first rear inflatable seat belts in 2010.
Today, we are exploring and delivering ways to make smarter vehicles and our transportation system more efficient to improve people's lives by helping them move more freely, safely and enjoyably. For example, we are changing how our products are made by creating high-quality vehicles in an environmentally and socially responsible way, including the use sustainable materials. Since 2000, we have used 12 industry and world-first plant-based materials in our production vehicles. We also are researching the possible use of tomato skin, bamboo, agave fiber, dandelion roots, algae and coffee chaff as part of our ambitious goal of making our vehicles with up of 20 percent sustainable material by 2025.
What you will be able to do
The Core Artificial Intelligence-Machine Learning (AI-ML) research group, within Ford's Research and Advanced Engineering area, is driving the discovery and implementation of AI-ML across all engineering functions within the Ford product landscape. Our exciting work requires highly qualified and motivated individuals who are ready to take on ambitious, multi-functional problems that require diligent research and out-of-the-box thinking.
As part of the Core AI-ML team, you'll conduct novel research to advance deep learning (DL) in such areas as vision, speech, decisioning and guidance, robotics, etc. You'll be able to leverage your expertise in software development to craft end-to-end design frameworks for model development, training and deployment. The position involves collaborating with leading researchers in academia, national labs and industry and actively generating intellectual property and publications. You will:
- Develop a research portfolio and lead research, development and progression of state-of-the-art concepts in ML-DL related to multimodal perception and the generation of contextual information for forward use in customer facing applications
- Create end-to-end workflow for integrating various aspects of a ML-based solution architecture in a full design cycle that includes data preparation (including augmentation), model selection, robustness checks and model compression for deployment
- Develop through, self-learning and deep research, new mathematical formulations and learning architectures as may become necessary when dealing with atypical/new problem statements. This will often require the synthesis of ML/DL research problem statements in conjunction with SME's and academia to seek out novel applications through re-purposing and/or discovery
- Partner with multidisciplinary teams within Research, Product Development, Manufacturing and other organizations to transform research solutions into practical product level embedded solutions
- Collaborate with application engineers to validate solutions against real-world application benchmarks for quality, robustness and continuous improvement
- Present at respected conferences and publish in high-impact peer reviewed journals
- Publish internally and engage in internal knowledge dissemination
The minimum requirements we seek
- Master's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics or Robotics
- At least one year of experience (academic research and/or industry) in DL for one or more application areas including Vision, NLP, Human-Machine Interactions and/or Digital Assistants
- One or more years (academic research and/or industry) in developing with Python and a common DL framework (TensorFlow, PyTorch, Keras, Caffe etc.)
- One plus year of experience (academic research and/or industry) working with Databases and Big Data tools such as Apache, Mongo, Tableau etc.
- A year or more of experience (academic research and/or industry) in Object Oriented Programming/Functional Programming for architecting scalable research oriented development frameworks and workflows
Our preferred requirements
- PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics or Robotics
- Experience with one or more cloud computing tools (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc.)
- Software development and architecting experience creating ML pipelines at scale
- Experience with AutoML type frameworks
- Proficiency with Mathworks ML-DL libraries
- Background implementing AI-ML algorithms on resource constrained edge devices such as on inferencing systems NVDIA(TX-), NXP (Tree-Runner) etc.
- Exceptional communication, teamwork and problem-solving skills
- Innovative thinker and quick learner with the ability to identify, propose and lead new research projects
- Passionate about staying abreast of challenges and exciting changes in ML and DL and their real time realizations for quickly establishing applicability to Ford engineering problems in order to build/contribute to the Ford's strategic and leadership vision
What you will receive in return
As part of the Ford family, you will enjoy excellent compensation and a comprehensive benefits package that includes generous PTO, retirement, savings and stock investment plans, incentive compensation and much more. You will also experience exciting opportunities for professional and personal growth and recognition.
If you have what it takes to help us redefine the future of mobility, we would love to have you join us.
Visa sponsorship may be available for this position.
By choice, we are an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to a culturally diverse workforce. 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.