Lead Engineering Technician | Vehicle

Ford Motor • Palo Alto, CA

12d • Hybrid

About The Position

Ford’s Electric Vehicles, Digital and Design (EVDD) team is responsible for delivering the company’s vision of a fully electric transportation future. EVDD is customer-obsessed, entrepreneurial, and data-driven and is dedicated to delivering an industry-leading customer experience for electric vehicle buyers and owners. The Lead Engineering Technician is responsible for performing vehicle instrumentation, test setup, and test execution alongside a team of technicians. In addition to completing technical work, this role will coordinate daily assignments, provide technical guidance, and partner with Engineering to translate immediate test needs into executable work. This position will support testing in the garage, on road, and at test facilities, including fault injection, vehicle dynamics, braking, handling, durability, thermal, NVH, and other vehicle development activities.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering or equivalent combination of relevant education and experience.
• Proficiency in vehicle instrumentation, sensors, data acquisition, vehicle networks, and test support.
• Ability to lead while contributing to the work, setting priorities, guiding technicians, and maintaining accountability.
• Ability to translate engineering requirements, drawings, schematics, and procedures into executable work.
• Strong judgment, communication, organization, and problem-solving skills in a changing environment.
• Ability to communicate and document work status, findings, risks, configurations, and open issues.
• Ability to work safely and maintain an organized, efficient work environment.

Nice To Haves

• Ability to serve as a working lead in an automotive test, prototype, motorsports, aerospace, or similar development environment.
• Proficiency with vehicle instrumentation, data-acquisition, and dynamics-measurement systems.
• Knowledge of high-voltage electric vehicles, electrical safety, vehicle software flashing, and module or data-logger configuration.
• Familiarity with Linux, scripting, technical documentation, configuration control, and engineering workflow tools.
• Ability to develop and improve instrumentation standards, test procedures, and data-quality processes.

Responsibilities

• Perform vehicle and subsystem instrumentation, data acquisition system setup, test preparation, troubleshooting, and test support alongside the technician team.
• Lead daily activities by assigning and prioritizing work based on test schedules, vehicle availability, Engineering needs, and established program priorities.
• Partner directly with Engineering to understand test objectives, instrumentation requirements, timing, and expected deliverables.
• Install, configure, validate, troubleshoot, and remove sensors, instrumentation wiring, data loggers, and related test equipment.
• Configure DAQ and verify sensors, data acquisition channels, and vehicle-network signals to ensure accurate and reliable test data.
• Prepare and support vehicles for vehicle dynamics, braking, handling, durability, thermal, NVH, road, and proving-ground testing.
• Participate in hands-on test execution, including pre-test inspections, system checks, system troubleshooting, and teardown.
• Verify sensor operation, calibration status, signal quality, and vehicle configuration, before releasing vehicles for testing.
• Troubleshoot instrumentation and data-quality issues in partnership with Engineering.
• Provide technicians with technical instruction while working alongside them to resolve complex installations, test setups, and system issues.
• Review completed work and maintain accurate documentation on instrumentation records, calibration information, channel lists, issues, and deviations.
• Communicate vehicle readiness, work status, test findings, risks, and blockers to Engineering and management.
• Track assignments, test requests, issues, and deliverables using Jira and other Atlassian tools.
• Identify tooling, equipment, material, vehicle, or workspace constraints and escalate them to management.

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