# Chief Product Officer - AI Optimization

**Company**: Ford Motor Company
**Location**: Dearborn
**Work arrangement**: hybrid
**Experience**: senior
**Job type**: full-time
**Category**: Engineering
**Industry**: Automotive
**Wikidata**: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q44294

**Apply**: https://efds.fa.em5.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperience/en/sites/CX_1/job/62108
**Canonical**: https://yubhub.co/jobs/job_03acf982-caa

## Description

We are seeking a strategic, outcomes-driven leader to establish and scale an AI Products Center of Excellence , a horizontal capability responsible for transforming how the organisation prioritises, governs, and delivers AI-enabled business value.

This role is designed for a senior leader with experience shaping enterprise operating models, guiding portfolio transformation, and embedding product discipline within large, matrixed organisations. The ideal candidate blends consulting-level strategic framing with hands-on experience implementing new practices, enabling them to move seamlessly between executive alignment, structured problem-solving, and delivery oversight.

**Responsibilities**

- Build and operationalise the AI Product CoE from the ground up, defining the mission, operating model, governance design, and engagement model.

- Create repeatable practices that scale across the enterprise, informed by best-in-class product operating frameworks and organisational design principles.

- Develop a single, unified AI product portfolio with consistent granularity, strategic alignment, and transparent prioritisation.

- Implement portfolio rationalisation and value case standardisation to address duplicate investments and fragmented solution architectures.

- Partner with senior leadership to clarify strategic priorities, align on problem statements, and communicate enterprise-wide value narratives.

- Translate complex AI capabilities and data foundations into meaningful business outcomes, enabling leadership decisions and measurable ROI.

- Create lightweight governance mechanisms: intake, ownership, lifecycle, stage gates, data trust checkpoints, and value realisation tracking.

- Ensure teams adopt consistent product definitions, decision frameworks, and documentation standards.

- Identify shared components, reusable patterns, and consolidation opportunities across AI, analytics, and data products.

- Partner with engineering and data leadership to reduce fragmented data sources and reinforce trust in enterprise datasets.

- Facilitate structured workshops using design thinking and service design methods to uncover real customer problems and shared needs.

- Create coherent value stories that integrate dealer, customer, and internal business perspectives into a unified narrative.

- Analyse sources of duplication, divergent development paths, and inefficiencies across teams.

- Recommend harmonisation strategies, closure of redundant workstreams, and reuse-first approaches to product development.

**Qualifications**

- Strategic transformation and operating model design.

- Enterprise product strategy and portfolio management.

- Cross-functional leadership in complex ecosystems.

- Innovation, service design, and problem framing.

- Executive storytelling and advisory.

- Practice creation and institutionalisation.

**Minimum qualifications**

- 10+ years of professional experience.

- BS or equivalent degree.

**Even better, you may have**

- MS, MBA or equivalent business degree.

- Design Thinking, Problem Solving, or Human Centred Design certifications.

- Product Management: Agile/SCRUM CSPO, PSPO, Six Sigma Black Belt, Certified Product Manager, Product Strategy.

- Experience in both consulting and industry leadership roles.

- Background in the business implementation of AI platforms, data modernisation, or advanced analytics products.

- Experience in dealer ecosystems, connected customer experience, or large operational networks.

## Skills

### Required
- AI
- Machine Learning
- Data Science
- Product Management
- Agile Methodologies
- Design Thinking
- Service Design
- Problem Framing
- Executive Storytelling
- Advisory
- Practice Creation
- Institutionalisation