Platform Engineering Architect

Ford Motor Company • Dearborn, MI

3d • $115,500 - $218,100 • Hybrid

About The Position

Ford is seeking an experienced Platform Engineering Architect for its Marketing and Sales Technology organization. In this individual-contributor role, the architect will shape and manage the evolution of Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) and Agentic Developer Platforms (ADPs), including self-service capabilities for CI/CD automation, infrastructure provisioning, and platform orchestration supporting Ford’s eCommerce foundation.

The role combines hands-on cloud and platform engineering with architecture leadership, DevSecOps, automation, and technical mentorship. The architect will collaborate with product teams, senior leaders, Enterprise Architecture, IT Operations, security, SRE, release management, and other technical domains to turn business and developer needs into secure, scalable, highly available platform capabilities. The work includes designing Google Cloud infrastructure and automation, developing developer platform products, applying AI and AIOps capabilities, improving reliability and observability, troubleshooting complex performance issues, optimizing cloud costs, and communicating architecture decisions and tradeoffs across teams.

The position requires 15 or more years of relevant professional experience and a bachelor’s degree in a related discipline or equivalent relevant experience. The stated 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 or more 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 designing, developing, and maintaining self-service platform products for CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, cloud services, and observability.
• Experience with cloud-native systems, platform engineering, DevSecOps, and public cloud environments, particularly Google Cloud Platform.
• 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 with 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 of multithreading, concurrency, and parallel processing concepts relevant 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.
• Experience building scalable, reliable, highly available solutions, including containerized and multi-tenant systems.
• Experience with performance testing, platform monitoring, and troubleshooting complex infrastructure and application issues.
• Ability to analyze application and infrastructure performance using logs, network statistics, kernel data, and APM metrics.
• Experience deploying, evaluating, and monitoring AI agents for platform engineering automation.
• Experience collaborating with technical leaders and teams across cloud, security, SRE, release management, and software engineering.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, including the ability to engage executive leaders and facilitate 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; employment eligibility will be verified at hire.

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, infrastructure provisioning, and platform orchestration.
• Define and evolve infrastructure architecture for next-generation platforms; research emerging technologies and recommend solutions for future workloads.
• Evaluate and select technologies and tools for product development and deployment on the eCommerce foundation layer.
• Work with product teams to identify developer pain points and improve the Developer Experience through platform engineering.
• Translate stakeholder and 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.
• Design, develop, and maintain secure, scalable cloud infrastructure using modern 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 tools such as Terraform, Packer, Ansible, shell scripting, NX Cloud, Helm, and Argo CD.
• Review Infrastructure as Code and automate cloud infrastructure deployment.
• Create repeatable DevSecOps automation and improve software engineer productivity through integrated CI/CD and infrastructure provisioning services.
• Establish and apply best practices for code quality, security, performance, and scalability using the specified 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 on GCP, including Compute Engine, Cloud Run, GKE, Cloud Operations suite, Anthos, Pub/Sub, Dataflow, Cloud Scheduler, Bigtable, AlloyDB, and other 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.
• Apply AIOps practices to improve platform 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 across teams, networks, and software in GCP, Azure, or AWS environments.
• Identify infrastructure-layer vulnerabilities and performance bottlenecks and recommend solutions to improve 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.
• Clearly communicate architecture decisions, risks, tradeoffs, and recommendations 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.
• 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: Senior