Manager, Cloud Platform Quality Engineering

Ford • Palo Alto, CA

17h • $167,200 - $316,600 • Hybrid

About The Position

Ford’s Electric Vehicles, Digital and Design (EVDD) team is charged with delivering the company’s vision of a fully electric transportation future. EVDD is customer-obsessed, entrepreneurial, and data-driven and is dedicated to delivering industry-leading customer experience for electric vehicle buyers and owners. You’ll join an agile team of doers pioneering our EV future by working collaboratively, staying focused on only what matters, and delivering excellence day in and day out. Join us to make positive change by helping build a better world where every person is free to move and pursue their dreams.
In this position, we are looking for a technical leader to own and drive the end-to-end (E2E) system testing and validation strategy for our next-generation connected vehicle ecosystem. In this role, you will lead a high-performing engineering team responsible for ensuring the seamless integration, reliability, and flawless performance of a highly complex system that connects physical vehicles, cloud-based backend data services, and user-facing mobile applications. As the owner of E2E system testing, you will bridge the gap between hardware, cloud software, and mobile platforms. You will design the validation blueprints, establish automated testing capabilities, and lead your team to simulate, test, and verify complex user journeys from the vehicle cabin to the cloud, and onto the customer’s smartphone.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field.
• 7+ years of experience in system-level testing, integration, or product validation.
• 3+ years of experience leading, managing, or mentoring technical engineering teams.

Nice To Haves

• Proven experience collaborating across multi-disciplinary teams (e.g., hardware/embedded systems, cloud platforms, and mobile apps) to validate complex, distributed systems.
• Cloud Infrastructure: Hands-on experience validating cloud-native architectures, specifically within Google Cloud Platform (GCP) (e.g., Pub/Sub, Cloud Run, BigQuery, GKE).
• Mobile Ecosystems: Deep familiarity with the iOS and Android application development and testing systems (including TestFlight, Google Play Console, and Android/iOS developer tools).
• Test & Project Management: Advanced proficiency with Jira for agile workflow management and defect tracking, and TestRail for test case management and execution tracking.
• Protocols & APIs: Strong understanding of end-to-end system architectures, APIs (REST, gRPC, WebSockets), and data transport protocols (MQTT, HTTP).

Responsibilities

• Define the E2E Validation Strategy: Architect and execute a comprehensive end-to-end system testing strategy that spans the entire connected vehicle ecosystem (Vehicle TCU/Infotainment → Cloud Platform → Mobile App + Other Devices).
• Cross-Functional Team Collaboration & Alignment: Act as the central integration hub across diverse engineering and validation organizations to ensure seamless end-to-end system readiness.
• In-Vehicle Device Testing Teams: Partner to align hardware-in-the-loop (HIL/SIL) testing, firmware release schedules, and vehicle telemetry validation (CAN/automotive Ethernet) with cloud and mobile environments.
• Mobile Test Teams: Coordinate with native iOS and Android app testing teams to align mobile release trains with E2E system validation cycles, ensuring feature parity and seamless user experiences (e.g., remote commands, vehicle status updates).
• Cloud & Electrification Test Teams: Collaborate with backend verification teams to validate cloud-native APIs, data pipelines, and electrification-specific features (such as EV charging telemetry, battery state-of-charge, and smart charging schedules).
• Test Planning & Case Management: Establish and govern test design standards within TestRail, ensuring comprehensive E2E test coverage, traceability to requirements, and organized execution runs across all collaborating teams.
• Defect Lifecycle & Triage Leadership: Lead complex, cross-domain triaging efforts to isolate and root-cause system failures across wireless networks, APIs, cloud databases, and in-vehicle modules. Own the defect lifecycle in Jira, ensuring clear reproduction steps and routing issues to the correct hardware, mobile, or cloud engineering squads.
• Team Leadership & Mentorship: Build, lead, and mentor a team of system test and validation engineers. Foster a culture of technical excellence, continuous learning, and an automation-first mindset.
• Environment & Mobile Infrastructure Ownership: Oversee the design and maintenance of end-to-end test environments, including simulated vehicle test systems, GCP staging environments, and mobile device testing configurations across native iOS and Android systems.
• Automation & Continuous Integration: Drive the transition from manual validation to robust, automated E2E test suites. Integrate E2E test execution into CI/CD pipelines to enable rapid, confident deployments.

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: Manager