Software Engineering Manager

Ford Motor • Dearborn, MI

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Ford Motor Credit Company team helps put people behind the wheels of great Ford and Lincoln vehicles. By partnering with dealerships, we provide financing, personalized service and professional expertise to thousands of dealers and millions of customers in over one hundred countries around the world. In this position... Ford Credit Technology Team is seeking an experienced Software Engineering Manager who is skilled in software engineering practices. The Software Engineering Manager will lead a team of Software Engineers and a Technical Program Manager based out of Dearborn, MI and will be responsible to manage and deliver capabilities for FordPay (eCommerce digital payments). This role will collaborate directly and continuously with Software Engineers, Product Managers, Designers, Architects, and Product Owners to build, validate, and release software products early and often in a dynamic and collaborative environment, with a strong focus on payment reliability, security, and compliance. The ideal candidate brings deep experience in payment processing systems (credit card flows), PSP integrations (Stripe), modern cloud-native engineering, and operational excellence for high-availability platforms. Crucially, this leader will champion the modernization of our engineering lifecycle by guiding the team in leveraging AI-enabled software development, AI-driven quality assurance, and AI-powered operational resilience (AIOps) to accelerate delivery, optimize quality, and ensure maximum platform uptime.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in information technology or computer science, or similar discipline.
• 10+ years of experience in a Software Engineering role with people leadership experience (engineering management).
• Experience leading engineering teams in adopting and optimizing AI-assisted software development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Gemini Code Assist, or similar AI coding assistants) to drive developer velocity and code quality.
• Familiarity with AIOps concepts, including the use of machine learning for predictive telemetry, automated anomaly detection, and self-healing systems in high-availability environments.
• Hands-on understanding or experience with AI-driven QA automation, predictive testing tools, and modern AI-powered testing methodologies.
• Strong knowledge of Java, JavaScript, React, Spring Boot, and building API-first microservices.
• Experience building cloud-native solutions (Google Cloud Platform preferred) and operating high-availability systems.
• Experience working with DevOps/Security tools like GitHub, Cloud Build, Tekton, 42Crunch, FOSSA, SonarQube, Cycode, etc.
• Strong leadership and communication skills and the ability to coach, teach, and guide teams through technological paradigm shifts (such as the integration of AI in software engineering).

Nice To Haves

• Payments domain experience: credit/debit card processing flows, integration with PSPs (Stripe preferred), tokenization/vaulting concepts, refunds and dispute/chargeback handling.
• Strong knowledge of SQL, NoSQL, and cloud-native databases.
• Strong knowledge of Software Craftsmanship practices including TDD, Clean Code, Refactoring, etc.
• Knowledge of Agile software methodologies (Scrum, eXtreme Programming, etc.).
• Familiarity with security and compliance expectations for payment systems (PCI DSS, secure data handling, encryption, access controls).
• Ability to work collaboratively with others and navigate complex decision making.
• Ability to collaborate well with product managers, designers, architects, and business partners.

Responsibilities

• Provides hands-on leadership and supervision for a software development team, fostering a culture of continuous learning and adaptation to modern, AI-augmented engineering workflows.
• Owns end-to-end delivery of FordPay payment capabilities, including credit/debit card processing flows (authorization, capture, settlement, refunds).
• Leads integrations and ongoing lifecycle management of Payment Service Providers (PSPs), with Stripe as the primary provider.
• Facilitates technical architecture discussions around application functionality, payment domain modeling, integration patterns, and the integration of AI capabilities where appropriate.
• Ensures transaction integrity through proven payment engineering patterns (idempotency, deduplication, retries, and safe reconciliation).
• Drives the adoption of AI-assisted coding tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot) to accelerate code generation, optimize refactoring, improve code readability, and reduce time-to-market while adhering to secure coding standards.
• Establishes and champions AI-driven testing frameworks and strategies, utilizing intelligent test generation, predictive defect analysis, and automated test-suite optimization to drastically reduce regression cycles and ensure robust coverage.
• Evolves the platform’s observability and reliability strategy by leveraging AI/ML-driven monitoring tools for predictive anomaly detection, proactive incident prevention, and automated root-cause analysis (RCA) of payment flows.
• Partners with Product Managers to develop and evolve payment experiences used by Ford customers across eCommerce journeys.
• Actively identifies risks (e.g., PSP dependency, latency, fraud/chargeback exposure, compliance gaps) and implements mitigation and contingency plans, ensuring AI-generated code and tools comply with security (PCI DSS) and IP guidelines.
• Verifies that delivered software meets desired business outcomes (payment success rates, reliability, customer experience, and operational readiness) using both traditional telemetry and AI-driven predictive insights.
• Reviews ongoing production operations; leads incident response and post-incident reviews (postmortems/RCAs) to prevent recurrence, utilizing AI-assisted diagnostics to speed up resolution times.
• Ensures secure payment design and compliance posture in partnership with Security/Compliance teams (e.g., PCI DSS controls, secure token handling).
• Actively participates in all team Agile ceremonies and champions Agile software processes, culture, best practices, and techniques.
• Develops engineering, professional, and career-related skills for engineers through coaching, mentorship, feedback, and collaborative practices—specifically preparing the workforce for the future of AI-augmented engineering.

Benefits

• Immediate medical, dental, vision and prescription drug coverage
• Flexible family care days, paid parental leave, new parent ramp-up programs, subsidized back-up childcare 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