Director Vehicle Engineering Ford Jobs (NOW HIRING)

As the Manager of Hybrid Infrastructure & Hosting, you will be the primary architect and operator of the computer platforms that power our new Battery Energy Storage System BESS manufacturing facility. Reporting to the Head of IT Infrastructure & Operations, you will lead the "engine room" of Ford Energy-managing the delicate balance between high-performance local edge computing on the factory floor and our enterprise-scale Google Cloud Platform environment.

Required

• Bachelor Degree or relevant work experience

• GCP Expertise: 5+ years of hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

• Professional Cloud Architect or Cloud Engineer certification is highly preferred.

• Infrastructure Experience: 8+ years in IT infrastructure with at least 3 years in a leadership or lead engineering role.

• Hybrid Proficiency: Proven experience managing "hybrid" environments where cloud and physical hardware must work in sync.

• Hardware Knowledge: Deep understanding of server hardware, enterprise storage, and data center physical infrastructure.

• Automation: Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools to automate environment deployment.

Preferred Skills & Attributes
 

• Manufacturing Context: Experience supporting a 24/7 production environment where system uptime directly impacts manufacturing throughput.
• Containerization: Strong knowledge of Kubernetes and Docker, particularly in a manufacturing or IIoT context.
• Problem Solver: A "get-it-done" mindset with the ability to troubleshoot complex issues across the full stack (from a physical cable to a cloud API).
• Collaborative: Ability to work closely with the Network and Security teams to ensure a seamless and hardened infrastructure.
   

You may not check every box, or your experience may look a little different from what we've outlined, but if you think you can bring value to Ford Motor Company, we encourage you to apply!
As an established global company, we offer the benefit of choice. You can choose what your Ford future will look like: will your story span the globe, or keep you close to home? Will your career be a deep dive into what you love, or a series of new teams and new skills? Will you be a leader, a changemaker, a technical expert, a culture builder...or all of the above? No matter what you choose, we offer a work life that works for you, including:
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. 

This position is leadership level 6 and ranges from $115,500-$218,100.      
Final determination of salary grade will be based on candidate's skills and experience, and base salary will be set within the applicable range according to job scope, responsibility and competitive market value.
For more information on salary and benefits, click here: https://fordcareers.co/LL6FE

Company: As Ford establishes a wholly owned subsidiary focused on Battery Energy Storage Systems, this role will initially be employed by Ford and is expected to transition to the subsidiary within one year.

Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.

Candidates for positions with Ford Motor Company must be legally authorized to work in the United States. Verification of employment eligibility will be required at the time of hire.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, age, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status or protected veteran status. In the United States, if you need a reasonable accommodation for the online application process due to a disability, please call 1-888-336-0660.

#LI-Onsite

#LI-KF2 

#FordEnergy

Required Qualifications

• Platform & OS Expertise: 8+ years of deep Linux system administration and engineering experience, with strong proficiency in Red Hat OpenShift, Kubernetes, Ansible, and Python.
• Infrastructure Experience: 8+ years in core IT infrastructure, including direct leadership or technical lead responsibilities in high-availability environments.
• Hardware & Virtualization: Proven experience sizing, deploying, and maintaining enterprise server hardware, hypervisors, and storage area networks (SAN/NAS).
• Modern Observability Expertise: Hands-year experience architecting and scaling modern observability pipelines. Proficiency with current industry-standard tools for distributed tracing, metrics, and log aggregation (e.g., OpenTelemetry, Grafana ecosystem, Datadog, Splunk, or Prometheus).
• Automation-First Mindset: Demonstrated ability to build fully automated deployment pipelines using Ansible playbooks and custom scripting.

Preferred Qualifications

• Manufacturing & OT Context: Background supporting 24/7 continuous manufacturing or IToT environments where system uptime directly dictates production throughput.
• Hybrid Cloud Awareness: Basic exposure to public cloud integrations (e.g., GCP, AWS, MS-Azure) to manage enterprise hybrid interconnects without heavy cloud reliance.
• Full-Stack Troubleshooting: Pragmatic, hands-on approach to diagnosing hardware fault codes, kernel panics, and container orchestration failures.
   

You may not check every box, or your experience may look a little different from what we've outlined, but if you think you can bring value to Ford Motor Company, we encourage you to apply!
As an established global company, we offer the benefit of choice. You can choose what your Ford future will look like: will your story span the globe, or keep you close to home? Will your career be a deep dive into what you love, or a series of new teams and new skills? Will you be a leader, a changemaker, a technical expert, a culture builder...or all of the above? No matter what you choose, we offer a work life that works for you, including:
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. 

This position is leadership level 6 and ranges from $115,500-$218,100.      
Final determination of salary grade will be based on candidate's skills and experience, and base salary will be set within the applicable range according to job scope, responsibility and competitive market value.
For more information on salary and benefits, click here: https://fordcareers.co/LL6FE

Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.

Candidates for positions with Ford Motor Company must be legally authorized to work in the United States. Verification of employment eligibility will be required at the time of hire.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, age, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status or protected veteran status. In the United States, if you need a reasonable accommodation for the online application process due to a disability, please call 1-888-336-0660.

#LI-Onsite

#LI-KF2 

#FordEnergy

On-Premises Infrastructure & Platform Engineering

• Local Data Center & Edge: Lead the physical and virtual design, rack layouts, power/cooling coordination, and lifecycle management for plant server rooms and low-latency edge compute clusters.
• Container & Platform Orchestration: Architect, deploy, and maintain enterprise Red Hat OpenShift and Kubernetes platforms to run real-time manufacturing and shop-floor workloads.
• Infrastructure Automation: Drive "Infrastructure as Code" principles across all local servers using Ansible and Python scripts to automate provisioning, configuration, and bare-metal deployments.

Operational Reliability, Observability & Security

• Systems Monitoring & Observability: Deploy end-to-end monitoring and alerting suites to maintain 24/7 visibility into Linux systems, host health, and container metrics.
• Business Continuity & Storage: Architect scalable, low-latency enterprise storage arrays for high-volume manufacturing datasets, backed by robust local backup and disaster recovery frameworks.
• System Hardening: Enforce strict Linux system security, access controls, and network integration policies in close coordination with cross-functional IT and OT security teams.

Project Execution & Vendor Management

• Plant Construction & Go-Live: Serve as the technical lead for infrastructure deployment during plant commissioning, ensuring host environments are fully operational for initial production lines.
• Hardware Sourcing: Collaborate with hardware vendors to specify, evaluate, and procure server chassis, storage arrays, and high-availability rack solutions.

Cloud Architecture & Management (GCP Focus)

• GCP Governance: Design, deploy, and manage Ford Energy's cloud environments.
• Cloud Economics: Monitor and optimize cloud consumption to ensure cost-effectiveness while maintaining high performance.
• Identity & Security: Implement and maintain robust Identity and Access Management policies and security configurations within the cloud environment.
   

On-Premises & Edge Infrastructure

• Physical Hosting: Lead the design and setup of the plant's local data center/server rooms, including rack layouts, power requirements, and cooling coordination.
• Edge Computing: Implement high-availability edge compute solutions to support real-time manufacturing data and low-latency production requirements.
• Virtualization: Manage the on-site virtualization layer to ensure maximum hardware utilization and resilience.
   

Operational Reliability & Data Integrity

• Business Continuity: Develop and test comprehensive backup and disaster recovery strategies that span both physical hardware and cloud workloads.
• Monitoring & Observability: Implement advanced monitoring tools to ensure 24/7 visibility into system health.
• Storage Management: Architect and manage scalable storage solutions for massive manufacturing datasets, ensuring data is available for analysis and long-term retention.
   

Project & Vendor Leadership

• Deployment: Lead the technical execution of infrastructure projects during the plant's construction and "go-live" phases.
• Hardware Sourcing: Work with vendors to specify and procure the physical infrastructure needed for the facility.