Vehicle Program Director

Ford Motor • Dearborn, MI

2d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Product Line Owner (PLO) for Provider Integrations leads the strategy, delivery, and ongoing management of Ford and Lincoln’s digital service scheduling platforms, FSR+ and LSR+. The role drives cross-functional execution across engineering, design, operations, and provider partners to deliver seamless customer and dealer service experiences. As a Product Line Owner, you're responsible for working with various teams in the identification, development, execution, and ongoing management of Digital Customer & Dealer Experiences, as well as external provider integrations. You will have a laser focus on customer, dealer and partner integration requirements, ensuring the delivery of a best-in-class scheduling and service experience for retail and commercial fleet customers. This role is central to managing a diverse landscape of provider capabilities—including Dealer Management Systems (DMS) and scheduling tools—to provide exceptional experiences across all channels, such as Mobile App, Web, and Fleet Telematics. Working alongside Engineering, Design, and Operations teams, you will utilize your full playbook to drive delivery and ongoing support.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or foreign equivalent in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Engineering Management, Business Administration or a related field and 15 years of progressive, post-baccalaureate experience in the job offered or a related occupation.
• 15 years of experience with Vehicle production development with engineering oversight.
• 10 years of experience with Product development life cycle, including managing budgets and delivering high quality products with controlled costs.

Responsibilities

• Provide a visceral feel for the target customers’ wants while championing cross-functional workstreams with Marketing, Planning, Basic Design, etc.
• Lead cross-functional development of cycle life plans/segment strategies for existing products that meet business needs.
• Ensure that architectural reuse strategies, new technology plans, and software feature migration plans are integrated into vehicle programs consistent with customer expectations, market trends, and overall business needs.
• Provide visionary yet practical product driven leadership.
• Develop product and business plans to achieve vehicle line profitability goals and integrate into annual corporate cycle and business plan updates.
• Deliver all financial targets in support of Commercial Business Group (CBG) segment guidelines and business plan objectives via team’s active management of all vehicle line income statement elements.
• Drive profitable growth and portfolio freshening via the delivery of low-investment, high margin vehicle derivatives.
• Deliver (with Sales/Marketing) an optional balance of vehicle content and vehicle volume/pricing/variable marketing to meet vehicle line profit and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) targets.
• Institute a culture of design efficiency obsession on all responsible vehicle lines.
• Deliver cost attack business plan objectives for all Total Value Management (TVM) related activities.
• Provide overall product vision and connection to customer-defined value for all functional skill teams.
• Optimize the program content to ensure compliance with critical-to-customer vehicle attributes, functional requirements, craftsmanship, and overall value-to-the-customer.
• Support Chief Program Engineer (CPE) leadership of engineering trade-offs to ensure delivery of overall targeted customer experience.
• Ensure Design team’s thematic progression is consistent with overall winning product proposition and is cost containable.
• Support CPE in overall sign-off of program attribute targets and content.
• Radically reduce product complexity and deliver transformational reductions in part counts.
• Demonstrate continued Operational Excellence by ensuring (through CPEs) that all program milestones are delivered on time with high quality of event.
• Drive program stability via the elimination of discretionary churn.
• Ensure (through Launch team and stakeholder events) that launches are achieved on time with quality.
• Demonstrate and institute a no-compromise attitude to achieving breakthrough Quality targets.
• Ensure total vehicle/customer view of quality is delivered – lead prioritization of roadmaps to deliver customer satisfaction.
• Drive, with the Plant Vehicle Team (PVT), Core Engineering, and the manufacturing plants, work streams to develop and deliver the comprehensive vehicle quality roadmap for current model quality.
• Facilitate, with the Corporate Quality Office, Core Engineering, and the PVT team, development of forward model quality plans.
• Facilitate timely resolution of Stop Ships, Quick Service Fixes (QSFs) and any required field actions – via agreed quality cadence.
• Develop high performing vehicle program teams with world class program delivery skills.
• Ensure that vehicle line team core skills are maintained including deep knowledge of customer requirements, competitive actions, and business/product skills.

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: Director