Platform Engineering Manager

Ford • Dearborn, MI

18d • $132,800 - $250,800 • Hybrid

About The Position

Ford is seeking an experienced Platform Engineering Manager to lead delivery and ongoing evolution of its Internal Developer Platform (IDP) for the Marketing and Sales Technology organization. The role develops self-service capabilities for CI/CD automation, infrastructure provisioning, and platform orchestration to help product teams improve developer experience and deliver software securely and efficiently. It combines platform engineering and cloud expertise with people leadership, delivery accountability, and cross-functional collaboration.

The manager owns the IDP and leads its strategy, roadmap, delivery, and continuous improvement. They work with product teams, platform architects, Enterprise Architecture, IT Operations, security, SRE, release management, and software engineering teams to translate business needs into technical capabilities and measurable outcomes. The role includes leading and developing engineers; designing and operating secure, scalable GCP infrastructure and DevSecOps capabilities; and advancing reliability, security, observability, cloud cost management, and cloud-native practices.

The position also supports adoption of AI-enabled automation and AIOps, including deployment, evaluation, and monitoring of AI agents used for platform engineering automation. Ford describes this as leadership level 6, salary grade LL6, with a stated salary range of $132,800–$250,800. Visa sponsorship is not provided; candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related discipline, or equivalent relevant experience.
• 12+ years of relevant professional experience.
• Experience developing and maintaining self-service platform products for CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, cloud services, and observability.
• Experience leading platform engineering delivery, cloud infrastructure initiatives, or DevSecOps adoption.
• Experience managing or operating services on GCP and supporting cloud-native application development.
• Experience with team leadership, mentoring, technical delivery, and coordination across stakeholder groups.
• Experience working with product teams to understand requirements and improve developer productivity and experience.
• Experience driving high availability, disaster recovery, auto-scaling, and multi-region platform practices.
• Experience partnering with cloud, security, SRE, and release-management teams.
• Strong communication, interpersonal, facilitation, and problem-solving skills, including ability to work with executive leadership and global teams.
• Strong experience with GCP services, including Compute Engine, Cloud Run, GKE, Cloud Operations suite, Anthos, Pub/Sub, Dataflow, Cloud Scheduler, Bigtable, AlloyDB, and other managed services.
• Experience managing cloud infrastructure provisioning, including VPCs, subnets, gateways, security groups, managed services, and Kubernetes clusters.
• Expertise with Infrastructure as Code and automation using 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 Kubernetes, Docker, GKE, and Red Hat OpenShift.
• Knowledge of DevSecOps and platform security tools, including SonarQube, Cycode, 42Crunch, Astra, JFrog Xray, container vulnerability scanning, and FOSSA.
• Experience with cloud-native architectures, including microservices, micro frontends, event-driven systems, APIs, Domain-Driven Design, serverless, and containerized applications.
• Working knowledge of microservices frameworks such as Spring Boot or Micronaut.
• Experience building scalable, reliable, and available cloud-native or transactional systems, including multi-tenant environments.
• Strong engineering and delivery background, with ability to guide technical talent on quality and delivery practices.
• Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States; visa sponsorship is not provided.

Nice To Haves

• Bachelor of Engineering degree preferred.
• Experience with Agentic AI, AIOps, or deploying, evaluating, and monitoring AI agents for platform engineering automation.
• Experience implementing and managing auto-scaling, disaster recovery, high availability, and multi-region Active/Active or Active/Passive configurations.
• Expertise with patch management and observability/APM tools such as Dynatrace, AppDynamics, Prometheus, Grafana, or ELK.
• Experience with Cloud FinOps and optimizing cloud infrastructure consumption costs.
• Experience with five-nines availability, multi-tenancy, containerization, and performance testing.
• Experience driving Shift Left quality, security, and open-source software practices and Shift Right platform engineering adoption.

Responsibilities

• Own and manage the Internal Developer Platform, including self-service services for CI/CD automation, infrastructure provisioning, and platform orchestration.
• Lead delivery and evolution of next-generation platform capabilities with platform architects and technical teams.
• Research emerging technologies and recommend solutions for future infrastructure and cloud-native workloads; evaluate tools for developing and deploying products on Ford’s eCommerce foundation.
• Partner with product teams to understand developer challenges, prioritize capabilities that improve Developer Experience, and translate business needs into technical and non-functional specifications.
• Work with senior leaders across Enterprise Architecture and IT Operations to deliver measurable platform improvements.
• Lead, coach, mentor, and develop platform engineering team members; set priorities, expectations, and delivery accountability.
• Build a collaborative, high-performing team; foster knowledge sharing, continuous improvement, and disciplined execution.
• Facilitate technical discussions, communicate with executive leaders and stakeholders, and build partnerships across cloud, security, SRE, release management, and software engineering.
• Design, develop, and maintain secure, scalable cloud infrastructure platforms using DevSecOps and platform engineering practices.
• Manage platform services using GCP and guide provisioning and management of cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes clusters, GKE, and Red Hat OpenShift.
• Lead Infrastructure as Code reviews and automate deployment of cloud infrastructure using tools including Terraform, Packer, Ansible, shell scripting, NX Cloud, Helm, and Argo CD.
• Manage and improve CI/CD capabilities using Tekton, GitHub Actions, and Jenkins.
• Establish and implement best practices for code quality, security, performance, and scalability using tools such as SonarQube, Cycode, 42Crunch, Astra, JFrog Xray, container vulnerability scanning, and FOSSA.
• Build repeatable DevSecOps task automation and connect CI/CD with infrastructure services to improve engineering productivity.
• Lead adoption of DevSecOps, observability, and platform engineering practices across the organization.
• Oversee patch management and use monitoring and APM tools to support platform health and alerting.
• Guide implementation and management of auto-scaling, high availability, disaster recovery, and multi-region Active/Active and Active/Passive architectures.
• Partner with technical teams to address platform security, performance, and operational concerns.
• Manage Cloud FinOps practices to monitor and optimize infrastructure consumption costs.
• Advance Shift Left quality, security, and open-source practices and Shift Right platform engineering practices.
• Support adoption of AI-enabled automation and AIOps; guide deployment, evaluation, and monitoring of AI agents for platform engineering service automation.
• Use platform, delivery, reliability, and cost insights to identify improvements and inform priorities; promote cloud-native development and platform practices across the organization.

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: Manager