Platform Engineering Architect

Ford • Dearborn, MI

20d • $115,500 - $218,100

About The Position

Ford’s Marketing and Sales Technology organization is seeking an experienced Platform Engineering Architect to shape the architecture and evolution of next-generation platforms that support its eCommerce foundation. This individual-contributor role owns and manages the architecture of Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) and Agentic Developer Platforms (ADPs), including self-service CI/CD automation, infrastructure provisioning, and platform orchestration. It combines hands-on cloud and platform engineering with architecture leadership, DevSecOps, automation, and technical mentorship.

The architect partners with product teams, senior leaders, Enterprise Architecture, IT Operations, security, SRE, and other technical domains to turn business and developer needs into secure, scalable, highly available platform capabilities. The role covers GCP infrastructure and cloud-native systems, platform automation, AI agents and AIOps, reliability and observability, performance troubleshooting, and cloud cost optimization. It also provides technical leadership and mentorship, facilitates decisions among stakeholders, and communicates architecture choices, risks, and tradeoffs to technical teams and executive leaders.

A bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related discipline—or equivalent relevant experience—is required. A Bachelor of Engineering is preferred. The posting requires 15+ years of relevant professional experience. The salary range is $115,500–$218,100. Visa sponsorship is not provided; candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States.

Requirements

• 15+ years of relevant professional experience.
• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related discipline, or equivalent relevant experience.
• Strong experience with platform engineering and self-service capabilities for CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, cloud provisioning, and observability.
• Experience with GCP services such as Compute Engine, Cloud Run, GKE, Cloud Operations suite, Anthos, Pub/Sub, Dataflow, Cloud Scheduler, Bigtable, and AlloyDB.
• Experience provisioning Google Cloud infrastructure, including VPCs, subnets, gateways, security groups, managed services, and Kubernetes clusters.
• Expertise in Infrastructure as Code and automation tools such as Terraform, Packer, Ansible, shell scripting, NX Cloud, Helm, and Argo CD.
• Experience with CI/CD tools such as Tekton, GitHub Actions, and Jenkins.
• Experience with containers and orchestration technologies, including Docker, Kubernetes, GKE, and Red Hat OpenShift.
• Experience with application and infrastructure security practices and tools, including SonarQube, Cycode, 42Crunch, Astra, container vulnerability scanning, and FOSSA.
• Knowledge of microservices architectures and frameworks such as Spring Boot, Micronaut, Ratpack, or Quarkus.
• Experience with cloud-native architectures, micro frontends, event-driven systems, APIs, Domain-Driven Design, and serverless technologies.
• Working knowledge of multiple programming languages and multithreading, concurrency, and parallel processing concepts as they relate to scalability, performance, and consistency.
• Experience with REST APIs, messaging platforms such as Kafka, RabbitMQ, or cloud Pub/Sub, and stream-processing technologies such as Spark or Storm.
• Experience with relational and NoSQL databases, including Cassandra, HBase, MongoDB, Memcached, or comparable systems.
• Ability to analyze application and infrastructure performance using logs, network statistics, kernel data, and APM metrics.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, including engaging executive leaders and facilitating decisions across teams.
• Ability to work effectively with global teams, lead through change, and provide technical mentorship.
• Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States; visa sponsorship is not provided.

Nice To Haves

• Bachelor of Engineering degree.
• Experience implementing auto-scaling, disaster recovery, high availability, and multi-region Active/Active or Active/Passive architectures.
• Experience with AIOps, Agentic AI automation, deploying and monitoring AI agents, or Model Context Protocol (MCP).
• Experience with observability tools such as Dynatrace, AppDynamics, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, or Splunk.
• Experience with cloud cost management and FinOps practices.
• Experience with five-nines availability, transactional systems, multi-tenancy, and large-scale eCommerce architectures.
• Experience driving adoption of Shift Left quality, security, and open-source software practices and Shift Right platform engineering practices.
• Experience mentoring senior technical talent and influencing platform strategy across multiple teams.

Responsibilities

• Own and manage the architecture of Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) and Agentic Developer Platforms (ADPs), including self-service CI/CD automation, infrastructure provisioning, and platform orchestration.
• Define and evolve infrastructure architecture for next-generation platforms; research emerging technologies and recommend solutions for future workload needs.
• Evaluate and select technologies and tools that support product development and deployment on the eCommerce foundation layer.
• Partner with product teams to understand developer pain points and improve Developer Experience through platform engineering capabilities.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to translate business needs into technical and non-functional specifications.
• Work with Enterprise Architecture and IT Operations leaders to deliver measurable improvements to the eCommerce platform.
• Champion platform engineering and observability practices across the organization.
• Design, develop, and maintain secure, scalable cloud infrastructure platforms using DevSecOps and platform engineering practices.
• Provision and automate Google Cloud infrastructure, including VPCs, subnets, gateways, security groups, managed services, and Kubernetes clusters.
• Build and maintain infrastructure automation using Terraform, Packer, Ansible, shell scripting, NX Cloud, Helm, and Argo CD.
• Review Infrastructure as Code and automate deployment of cloud infrastructure.
• Build repeatable DevSecOps automation and improve engineer productivity through integrated CI/CD and infrastructure provisioning services.
• Establish and apply practices for code quality, security, performance, and scalability using relevant security and quality tools.
• Apply patch management, security controls, and operational practices that support platform reliability and maintainability.
• Develop and maintain self-service platform products for CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, cloud services, and observability.
• Apply cloud-native architectures and technologies, including microservices, micro frontends, APIs, serverless, Kubernetes, and Docker.
• Support architectures and services using GCP and its managed services.
• Implement and monitor AI agents that automate platform engineering services, improve developer productivity, and support platform operations.
• Support Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agentic AI capabilities for platform engineering, and apply AIOps practices to improve automation and Developer Experience.
• Advance Shift Left practices for quality, security, and open-source software use, alongside Shift Right platform engineering practices.
• Design and apply auto-scaling, high availability, disaster recovery, and multi-region Active/Active and Active/Passive patterns.
• Create and maintain architecture diagrams, design documents, and operational procedures for high availability and disaster recovery.
• Use observability and application performance tools to monitor platform health and support incident diagnosis.
• Analyze kernel logs, network statistics, application logs, and APM metrics to troubleshoot resource hotspots, API latency, and platform-health issues.
• Identify root causes and resolve complex performance problems involving multiple teams, networks, and software across GCP, Azure, or AWS environments.
• Identify infrastructure-layer vulnerabilities and performance bottlenecks and recommend improvements to subsystem quality and performance.
• Apply Cloud FinOps practices to understand and optimize cloud infrastructure consumption costs.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership and mentor engineers.
• Partner with cloud, security, SRE, release management, and other technical experts to deliver secure and reliable platform capabilities.
• Facilitate technical discussions among stakeholders and help teams reach decisions or recommendations.
• Communicate architecture decisions, risks, tradeoffs, and recommendations clearly to technical teams and executive leaders.
• Work effectively with global teams in remote and virtual environments and help lead teams through technical and organizational change.

Benefits

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