Solutions Architecture - Data Engineering Lead

Ford • Dearborn, MI

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

ISDP requires a Data Governance Lead to design, develop and maintain data governance architecture for Industrial Systems Data Platform.
Lead definition, development and maintenance of data governance standards - metadata, classification, quality, lineage, access controls.
Manage the governance of sharing ISDP data with internal and external suppliers, partners
Build data governance tooling in GCP to support data classification, and data provisioning
Architect, and Develop governance controls that support data mapping to privacy classification, access and data retention policies
Design enterprise metadata management, including business, technical, operational, and privacy metadata
Translate business and regulatory policies into enforceable standards.
Why This Role Matters
As ISDP scales to serve Ford's global manufacturing and engineering operations, robust data governance is critical. This role ensures that data is trustworthy, secure, and compliant—enabling confident decision-making while protecting Ford and its partners

Requirements

• 8+ years in data engineering/governance with 3+ years in a lead role
• Strong experience with Google Cloud Platform (BigQuery, Dataplex, Data Catalog, DataFlow, Pub/Sub, IAM)
• Proficiency in Terraform/IaC for governance infrastructure automation
• Experience with automotive or manufacturing data systems
• Experience with data privacy regulations and compliance frameworks
• Excellent communication skills for cross-functional stakeholder engagement

Responsibilities

• Design and implement end-to-end, domain-driven data architectures tailored for Industrial System - Product Development, Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management, Quality systems, leveraging Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to deliver secure, scalable, and governed data solutions.
• Lead the data mesh transformation, enabling domain teams to own, manage, and serve data products via self-serve GCP-native platforms such as BigQuery, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, Cloud Composer, and Dataplex.
• Architect real-time and batch data pipelines to ingest industrial systems data, ensuring lineage, data quality, and observability through tools like Cloud Logging, Cloud Monitoring, and Data Catalog.
• Develop customer-facing and internal React applications for secure, role-based access to governed data products—supporting data discovery, reporting, and operational dashboards across vehicle and charging services.
• Apply best practices from TOGAF and Data Management Body of Knowledge (DAMA-DMBOK) to enforce architectural consistency, policy-driven governance, master data management, and compliance (e.g., SOC2, GDPR, CCPA).
• Establish federated governance structures and reusable blueprints across vehicle domains to manage access control, encryption, and metadata—enabling scalable data sharing without compromising compliance.
• Monitor and continuously improve the operational health of data platforms and services, resolving systemic issues and enabling data self-service capabilities.
• Drive platform decisions and reference architecture for distributed computing using GCP’s AI/ML, Data Mesh, and streaming analytics tools to support predictive maintenance, charging optimization, and customer segmentation.
• Collaborate on React-based developer portals and internal UIs to facilitate self-service data product access, enabling data-as-a-product principles across multiple domains.
• Act as a subject matter expert on data security, interoperability, and semantic layer modeling (e.g., Looker Studio, BigQuery views) to ensure consistent analytics across multiple Industrial Systems domains.
• The role is 90% technical, focused on platform architecture, data governance engineering, and solution implementation, with 10% management of stakeholder engagement, leading team alignment, and roadmap planning.

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: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees