HMI Software Product Owner

Ford • Dearborn, MI

22d • $84,480 - $162,120 • Hybrid

About The Position

In this position...
The HMI Software Product Engineer (SPE) is a senior feature delivery leader within in-vehicle infotainment, responsible for translating product vision and design intent into executable software backlogs and driving end-to-end delivery across the in-vehicle digital experience. This includes the User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) layers, as well as supporting middleware, services, and vehicle integration.

Operating at the intersection of Product, Design, and Engineering, the SPE plays a critical leadership role in aligning cross-functional teams and ensuring high-quality feature execution. This role requires a strong understanding of engineering systems and artifacts, enabling effective translation of product, technical, and UI/UX requirements into clear, actionable work items.

The SPE owns and drives backlog strategy and execution within Jira, including story creation, refinement, grooming, and triage. By incorporating Product Owner responsibilities, the SPE ensures well-defined acceptance criteria, alignment with program priorities, and readiness for implementation across multiple teams. This role is accountable for cross-team coordination, dependency and risk management, and integrated validation from concept through launch, ensuring predictable program execution and high-quality release outcomes.

With broad organizational influence, the SPE partners closely with Product Management, Digital Product Design, engineering scrum teams, and testing organizations to ensure seamless integration, feature readiness, and a consistent, customer-centric UI/UX experience across vehicle platforms.

We are hiring for two positions with key distinctions outlined below:

Role 1: Driver Information HMI
In this role, the SPE leads delivery of Driver Information HMI, owning UI and UX elements such as layouts, animations, themes, drive modes, and feature integration across Build, Thrill, and Adventure domains. This includes ownership of Welcome and Farewell screen experiences, ensuring a seamless, engaging, and high-quality User Experience across all in-vehicle displays. The SPE ensures design intent is accurately realized through execution while maintaining consistency and performance across domains and vehicle platforms.

Role 2: User Interaction Controls
In this role, the SPE leads delivery of all User Interaction Controls within the vehicle’s User Interface, including Steering Wheel Controls, Multi-Modal Controllers (MMC), and Gang Switches. This role is responsible for end-to-end feature integration across in-vehicle displays, ensuring consistent, intuitive, and reliable behavior across all user inputs. The SPE drives alignment between hardware inputs, software behavior, and User Experience (UX) expectations to deliver a cohesive interaction model.

Requirements

• Experience: 5+ years (or equivalent) delivering complex, cross-functional software features in embedded, automotive, or adjacent domains; demonstrated ownership across multiple teams and releases.
• Backlog leadership: Proven ability to author high-quality epics and user stories (clear scope, testable acceptance criteria, dependency mapping) and drive Agile execution (grooming, PI planning, sprint delivery).
• Systems integration mindset: Ability to reason about end-to-end behavior across HMI ↔ middleware/services ↔ vehicle signal access (via API abstraction) and drive integration/validation outcomes.
• Technical proficiency: Strong technical depth to lead engineers—comfortable with architecture discussions, interface contracts, and failure-mode thinking.
• Diagnostics/triage: Experience leading defect triage using logs and traces (e.g., ADB/dev logs; CAN trace familiarity) and driving disciplined prioritization/closure.
• Tools: Proficiency with Jira and Confluence; comfortable creating traceability to requirements/design artifacts and managing dependencies.
• Communication/leadership: Strong cross-functional leadership skills—can drive decisions, align stakeholders, and communicate risks/status crisply to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Education: BS in Engineering, Computer Science, or related technical field (or equivalent practical experience).

Nice To Haves

• Direct experience with QNX/Android Automotive, infotainment HMIs and Figma.
• Familiarity with CAN-based feature behaviors and vehicle state modeling; exposure to tools such as CANalyzer/Wireshark (or similar).
• Background in driver-focused feature areas.
• Experience with test management tools and reviewing test coverage against acceptance criteria.
• Knowledge of automotive program cadence and release gating (launch milestones, OTA readiness, in-field defect handling).

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end delivery for a number of vehicle features sets from concept through release sign-off.
• Translate PRDs, design artifacts, and system requirements into epics and sprint-ready user stories with clear acceptance criteria in Jira.
• Lead feasibility assessment, scope definition, and backlog readiness for PI planning; manage change/churn while protecting milestones.
• Drive cross-functional alignment with Product, Digital Product Design, Architecture, Engineering, and Test to ensure shared understanding of intent, priorities, and dependencies.
• Define and manage feature dependencies and blockers across HMI, services, platform, and validation.
• Validate end-to-end feature behavior on bench/vehicle through demos and product truth sessions; ensure implementation matches UX intent and functional expectations.
• Lead defect triage and prioritization for owned features; drive issues to closure through root-cause direction, retest strategy, and stakeholder communication.
• Maintain clear execution visibility via epic status summaries, risk registers/mitigation plans, and regular stakeholder updates.
• Ensure test coverage alignment by reviewing/confirming that test cases map to story acceptance criteria and key edge cases.

Benefits

• Immediate medical, dental, vision and prescription drug coverage
• Flexible family care days, paid parental leave, new parent ramp-up programs, subsidized back-up child care 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.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees