Ford is a global technology leader where data is the engine of our transformation. We are a data-centric organization that makes data-driven decisions at every level, leveraging the power of AI to solve complex cost and quality challenges at a massive scale. Within the Enterprise Data Platform (EDP), we aren't just managing data; we are building intelligent systems that will define the future of mobility. If you want to work in an environment where your code directly impacts the efficiency and quality of millions of vehicles, Ford is the place for you.
We are seeking a Staff Platform Software Engineer who is both a visionary thought leader and a battle-tested, hands-on technologist. In this role, you will be the technical cornerstone of our Governance and Services portfolio, solving our most significant data platform challenges. You will serve as a "technical multiplier" – not only delivering elite-level architecture and code but also raising the collective bar of the organization by teaching, guiding, and providing technical performance feedback to people leaders.
This role is for a practitioner who remains at the forefront of industry trends, possessing the intellectual agility to rapidly bridge knowledge gaps and establish subject matter expertise in emerging domains whenever the mission requires it.
- Engineering Excellence: Define and evangelize industry-standard best practices for Java/Python backends and Angular/React frontends. You will oversee code bases, branching strategies, and AI-enabled test harnesses to ensure seamless, high-quality delivery and maximum developer velocity.
- Architectural Leadership: Drive the design and evolution of solution and application architectures across the Governance and Services portfolio. Ensure systems are agnostically designed to leverage the best of public cloud while maintaining high portability and performance.
- Petabyte-scale Engineering & Parallelism: Solve complex data challenges by maximizing distributed cloud parallelism. You will be a hands-on expert in BigQuery and SQL, optimizing large-scale data processing and ensuring the platform can handle Ford’s massive data requirements with elite efficiency.
- AI Enablement & Acceleration: Act as the organization’s AI champion. Drive developer velocity through AI-assisted requirements-driven development using modern AI Coding Assistants, and lead AI-assisted ideation and problem-solving using advanced models such as Claude and Gemini.
- Agentic Experience Development: Lead the development of agentic capabilities, leveraging current and future data platform features to create autonomous, intelligent system behaviors and automated data workflows.
- Platform Engineering & Automation: Use Terraform to drive Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and sophisticated CI/CD pipelines. You will focus on reducing developer friction through platform engineering principles and automated DevSecOps workflows.
- Mentorship & Influence: Lead by doing, showing, and teaching. You will work alongside engineering teams to elevate their skills while collaborating with people leaders to provide objective feedback on engineering excellence and velocity.
- Cloud FinOps & Infrastructure Optimization: Act as a champion for right-sized and appropriate infrastructure. You will analyze the cost and performance implications of technology choices at scale, ensuring that our architectural decisions are as fiscally responsible as they are technically sound.
- Strategic Communication: Build deep relationships with engineers and senior leadership alike, distilling high-level technical complexity into palatable, actionable language for all stakeholders regardless of their technical depth.
