Technical Program Manager/Delivery Manager

Ford Motor • Dearborn, MI

5d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Design, Cost & Complexity (DCC) team in Ford's Global Data, Insight & Analytics (GDI&A) organization builds data and AI products that help Ford design better vehicles at lower cost and with less complexity. Our products serve engineers, program teams, purchasing and business leaders across product development, from vehicle configuration and parts complexity to design cost, reductive design, and AI-enabled engineering tools. We are a global team of product managers, engineers, data scientists and designers. We work closely with our business partners to take products to real adoption, and we increasingly build with AI at the core. You will own delivery for one or more products in the DCC portfolio, depending on business priorities, and ensure they deliver measurable outcomes for real users. Your assignment may change as the portfolio evolves. Working closely with the Product Manager, you will turn vision and strategy into an executable plan, clear the path for the team, manage dependencies across engineering, IT and business partners, and make sure we prove value with users, not just in demos.

Requirements

• A bachelor's degree in engineering, computer science or a related technical field, or equivalent experience
• 3+ years in technical program management, delivery management, or a similar role delivering software products or platforms.
• Experience taking products toward production and real user adoption.
• A proven ability to lead through influence: aligning engineers, stakeholders and leaders without formal authority.
• Strong command of agile delivery (Scrum/Kanban and portfolio-level planning) and Jira.
• Experience managing complex integrations and dependencies across multiple teams and legacy systems.
• Enough technical depth to engage credibly with engineers on architecture, data flows, APIs, cloud platforms and AI/ML trade-offs, and the ability to quickly learn any technology well enough to evaluate proposed solutions and raise risks.
• Hands-on use of AI tools in your own program management work.
• Ability to learn new domains quickly and become credible with subject-matter experts.
• Strong knowledge of change management principles.
• Clear, candid communication with both engineers and senior leadership.
• A bias for action: you create clarity and move forward without waiting for direction.

Nice To Haves

• Experience delivering AI/ML-enabled products or engineering tools for technical users
• Automotive product development experience: vehicle configuration, bills of materials and parts data, cost engineering, or complexity reduction
• Experience with resource planning or capacity modeling
• Experience in regulated or compliance-sensitive environments
• User adoption experience
• Experience working in a global team across time zones

Responsibilities

• Own the delivery roadmap. Partner with the Product Manager to translate vision and strategy into quarterly plans and milestones. Keep scope, sequencing and trade-offs clear.
• Drive measurable results. Plan pilots and releases with business partners: choose users, set baselines, and track adoption, time saved and quality.
• Manage cross-functional dependencies. Coordinate with leadership, subject-matter experts, program teams, IT, security and data teams. Resolve blockers before they reach the team.
• Lead integration and transition planning. Plan the move from legacy tools and processes to new ways of working, including risks, cutover and change management.
• Connect the workstreams. Make sure products and components fit together as one system rather than separate projects.
• Run an effective delivery system. Facilitate planning, reviews and retrospectives. Keep work structured in Jira so visibility comes from the work itself.
• Manage risk honestly. Surface risks, prototype-versus-production gaps, and schedule realities early and transparently.
• Champion adoption. Partner with users and domain experts on onboarding, feedback loops and change management.
• Work across a global team. Coordinate delivery with teammates in multiple locations, and keep work moving across time zones.
• Go deep on technical problems. Dig into complex issues to understand root causes, evaluate trade-offs, and propose solutions. Understand the product's architecture, integration points and future scalability needs well enough to spot risks early.
• Improve how we deliver. Design and champion delivery practices, frameworks and governance that make delivery more predictable and reduce overhead across teams, not just your own.
• Move between products as priorities shift. Ramp up quickly on new domains, teams and technologies.
• Model our culture. Think like a founder, move fast and learn faster, start with the user, win together, and always do the right thing.
• Run delivery AI-first Use AI to build and maintain plans, work breakdowns and dependency maps, and to adjust timelines as conditions change. Use project data and AI to spot risks, bottlenecks and schedule slips before they affect delivery. Automate administrative work (meeting notes, action items, Jira updates and progress summaries) so your time goes to stakeholders, decisions and outcomes. Use AI to run what-if scenarios on scope, resources and trade-offs. Apply judgment to everything AI produces, and make sure AI use is transparent, secure and ethical.

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