Senior Electrical Distribution Integration Engineer

Ford Global Career Site
Palo Alto, CA

As an EDS Integration Engineer for the Advanced EV Team, you will be at the forefront of defining the "nervous system" for our next-generation Model e products. You will be responsible for the end-to-end vehicle-side electrical wire harness design and physical integration, serving as a critical link between architectural theory and vehicle reality. This role is essential to the development of a Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV), where you will optimize the intersection of hardware, software, and mechanical packaging. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure the harness architecture is efficient, manufacturable, and robust, while remaining hands-on during lab-car and vehicle "bring-up" phases to troubleshoot and validate your designs. 

What you’ll be able to do: 

  • Zonal Architecture Leadership: Drive the electrical wiring system design from concept to production, focusing on the transition toward Zonal power and data distribution to minimize mass and maximize vehicle efficiency. 

  • Multi-Voltage & Power Distribution: Architect and integrate diverse voltage platforms, leading wire sizing, fuse coordination, and terminal selection based on steady-state and transient power profiles to ensure robust power delivery. 

  • High-Speed Data Management: Design for signal integrity across the vehicle’s data backbone, managing shielded circuits for ADAS sensors, Automotive Ethernet, and other high-bandwidth communication protocols. 

  • System Optimization & Partitioning: Partner with Subsystem engineers to establish harness partitioning and complexity strategies to minimize wire count, optimize cost, and reduce weight—critical metrics for EV range. 

  • Functional Safety & Topology: Influence the design of grounding and network topologies while collaborating on Functional Safety (ISO 26262) assessments to ensure the EDS architecture supports safety-critical features. 

  • ECAD Schematic Development: Develop logical and physical electrical schematics using professional ECAD tools (e.g., Capital, Zuken), owning the technical resolution of integration issues as they arise. 

  • Hands-on Integration & Bring-up: Support Labcar and prototype vehicle builds as the primary lead for electrical bring-up, circuit troubleshooting, and validating system-level changes in a real-world environment. 

  • Manufacturing & Innovation: Review 2D drawings and 3D routing to ensure supplier readiness while investigating new harness technologies (e.g., busbars or automated manufacturing) to push the boundaries of EV design. 

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